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Making Herbal Infusions:
Herbal Teas with a Specific Nourishment Purpose
I recommend making infusions, not herbal teas. Herbal teas are when you steep the herbs for 3-5 minutes to enjoy the flavors of wonderful herbal plants. Medicinal Herbal Infusions are when you steep the herbs for at least 30 minutes (I recommend 3-4 hours) covered in a quart canning jar, in the covered pot, or in the oven on 170F. Some people make their infusions in a crock pot on low heat. No boiling unless it is the hard parts of the plant that you very gently, soft boil. This is all explained below.)
I recommend steeping them overnight in the canning jar or the pot you boiled the water in, keeping the pot covered.
You can strain the herbs in the AM and reheat the infusion, oh so very gently to preserve the nutrients, or enjoy at room temperature.
Refrigerate your extra tea and enjoy cool in hot weather or VERY gently warm. Do NOT boil.
I invite you to NEVER use a Keurig® machine to make herbal medicinal infusions. I don’t think they make good coffee either but that is my bias on slow making plant medicines. I consider well made, organic coffee a powerful plant medicine.
I also invite you to leave a microwave out of any medicine making process. And, just for the record, Food IS Medicine.
Medicinal Herbal Infusions are empowering self-made medicine. Turn your tea making into a self-healing ritual.
Avoid gulping them down to “get it over with” like you were “swallowing a pill.” Sit in a soothing place and sip, quietly. Visualize the herbal medicine flowing through your body, to the tissues and organs you are working on healing. See the “tea” bathing your body tissues with healing energy.
The tea making and drinking ceremony, ritual, is truly part of the healing experience. Remember to thank the Spirit of the Plant(s) that will be nourishing your health. This honoring of the Plant’s Vital Energy Medicine is healing Plant Spirit Medicine in itself. Savor it.
Making Infusions with soft Plant parts or premixed medicinal blends:
Boil water.
Measure leaf and flower herbs while water is heating.
Use approximately 1 rounded teaspoon of dried herbs per 8 oz. cup of water.
To make a stronger medicinal infusion, use more herbs.
When water is boiling; shut off heat source, add dried herbs, and gently stir into the hot water.
Cover your pot immediately and let the infusion steep for at least 30 minutes before drinking any.
I make medicinal infusions at night so I can let the infusion steep, covered, overnight to make a deeply infused and strong medicinal tea.
I place herb pot in the oven and heat my oven to 200F. Shut off oven once it warms to 200F & leave overnight.
Sometimes I set a timer to let it steep at the 200F for an hour or so, then shut oven off before I go to bed.
In the AM, I strain and bottle my herbal medicine.
Making Decoctions:
If making infusions with seeds, roots, or barks, the hard parts of plants:
chop pieces as small as you can. I use a mortar & pestle for seeds. A blender or electric coffee grinder will grind up bark and roots. Break them into small pieces before you put them in the grinder. I only grind into rough powder, exactly the amount I am going to use, right before I use the herb parts to decoct them.
When water is boiling, reduce heat to very gentle simmer. Add herb pieces, cover, and simmer very, very gently for 20- 30 minutes. Yes, set a timer and check it to make sure it’s not boiling like crazy.
If you do not have a very gentle simmer option on your stove top: place in oven at 215F for 30 minutes.
After the 20 minutes stovetop OR 30 minutes in oven at 215F, shut off heat source & let the infusion steep, covered, overnight to make the strongest medicinal infusion.
If I did stove top steeping, I then warm my oven to 215F after putting pot into oven for the night. Once 215F is reached, I turn off oven and leave it overnight. Again, set a timer so you don’t forget this and go off to bed with your oven on.Again, set a timer so you don’t forget this and go off to bed with your oven on.
I then strain and bottle in the AM.
***Do not let this herbal infusion decoction full rolling boil as it ruins the medicinal properties and nutrients in the herbal infused medicine.
When using these hard parts of herbs it is a minimum of 1 tsp. per cup of water. I generally use a well rounded tsp. per cup of water.
***If you are making mixed infusions with hard parts that need to simmer and the leaves & flowers that do not need simmering:
simmer the hard parts first.
Turn off heat.
Add leaves / flowers and let steep, covered, overnight.
Strain in the AM.
I recommend making a quart each night and sipping 1 cup, 3-4 times throughout the day, each day.
OR I usually make ½ gallon to 1 gallon at a time so I do not have to make medicinal infusions every night. You can drink it cold (keep in the refrigerator) or you can gently re-warm. I usually fill a quart canning jar, with the cold tea from the fridge, then I leave the quart jar on the counter overnight to enjoy at room temp.
When re-warming the tea do not over heat it. Never boil the pre-made tea. Do not make tea, heat tea water, or re-heat tea in a microwave.
Dosing with medicinal infusions & decoctions:
generally 2-4 cups a day depending on the herbs and the medicine’s purpose
A cup is 6-8 ounces of fluid, NOT a 12-16 ounce modern day coffee mug.
Always start with a low dose & slowly increase the dose to heal.
Use 6 days a week, take one day off a week.
The concept of ‘more is better’ does not apply here. Most often herbal medicine is about *subtle shifts in healing not huge pendulum swings. Herbal medicine is not about shocking the body into change.
*An examples of a pendulum swing in herbal medicine would be quickly stopping post partum hemorrhaging or intervening with cayenne tincture if someone was having a stroke or heart attack. Giving herbs to have a huge impact, quickly, makes sense THEN immediately seek emergency medical attention.
High Mineral tea: restores minerals to the body cells (Think bone health) that have been depleted from refined foods, toxins, stress, and life as we know it. Stinging nettles, oat straw, alfalfa leaf, red raspberry leaf, mullein leaf, boneset, and comfrey* leaf are all good for helping with restoring the body's minerals and as a bonus the tea will help with constipation (the extra fluid, from drinking the warm infusion, is dandy as well!)
Vary the herbs you use to make the tea, don’t use the same combination every time. Use 3-4 different herbs for each batch you make. Always use nettles and either mullein or comfrey. Vary the other 2 herbs every batch. Variety is the spice of healing AND supports you getting a variety of the minerals and medicinal compounds the plants have to offer you. Important stuff, changing up things.
If using mineral supportive prepared tea formulas: IF tea bags are glued shut, do not use them in bag form. To avoid steeping the glue into your tea, I suggest you open the tea bags and steep the loose herbs in a jar for 3-4 hours or overnight. Follow the infusion instructions above.
Note: When making tea out of tea leaves, black-green-white teas, you do not want to steep them for long times and certainly not over night. Generally 3-5 minutes steeping them in a closed pot or covered tea cup is enough. Longer steeping can create bitter teas. If you wish to blend your tea leaf teas with herbal infusions, it is best to make the infusions separately. After straining your tea made from actual tea leaves, add the gently re-heated herb infusions to the tea leaf teas. Mix them to the proportion you like for the taste you are looking for: 1/3 tea to 2/3 herbal infusion, 1/2 to 1/2, etc. Figure out what works for you flavor wise and perhaps caffeine wise.
Check out Shelby Connelly (Five Elements Living Acupuncture & Retreat Center in Northern NY) and I as we chat about tea and having girly fun. Making Tea in the New Kitchen at Five Elements Living
*Comfrey is a very safe herb for human consumption. Susun Weed, a internationally known herbal educator and Wise Woman Healer, wrote this post on the safety of Comfrey.
