Overview
When someone mentions making a cup of herbal tea, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For many people, it conjures images of those little boxes of tea bags that can be found in numerous varieties on the shelves of just about any health food or grocery store. Most of those boxes have basic instructions to heat a little water and pour it over one or two bags, then let it steep for 5-10 minutes. While this is all fine and well for a pleasant cup of tea, if we're looking at using teas in a nutritive or medicinal context this method will typically fall well short of bringing about the most desirable results.
In my experience working in the supplement industry, one of the most common areas of confusion I have to clear up for people is the difference between casual or daily maintenance use and therapeutic use. In this case, making a quick cup of tea from a bag might well be a good way to add in a healthier beverage choice to your routine, but it isn't likely to yield the real benefits of whatever herbs you might be using. For real results, we need to use real infusions.
So, what is the difference between a classic "store bought" tea and a proper infusion? They share the same technique in that an infusion is when we take heated water and pour it over our plant material to extract its qualities into the water, (as opposed to the other method of tea making, the decoction.) Technically speaking, while there may be a few slightly different takes on it, an infusion typically involves 1oz. by weight of dry herb material and 1qt. of water steeped for at least 4 hours. So, no small pinches of herbs and no 5 minutes of steeping. Using larger amounts of plant material and longer steeping time allows for a much fuller and more potent infusion of nutritive and medicinal qualities into the tea.
Infusions are in fact an excellent method of delivery for most situations. They are an easy way to get higher levels of nutritive or medicinal constituents into the body than one would typically be able to do with capsules or even with food in many cases. This can lead to far more potent results when working with herbs for addressing health concerns, as very often the concentrations found in standard supplement serving sizes is insufficient or impractical for anything beyond basic daily maintenance.
Making Infusions
Infusions are typically used for preparations involving the lighter or more aerial parts of a plant. That is to say, we would typically use the leaves or flowers in an infusion. These parts are lighter and more fragile, and will generally extract very well by simply steeping in water while also having their qualities preserved by avoiding the overheating that can occur in a decoction (in which case the herbs would be actually boiled in the water rather than having the water poured over them after boiling.) It is generally best to use dried plant material here rather than fresh. This is due to the fact that the drying process helps to break down the cell walls of the plant and thereby helps to facilitate a more complete extraction of constituents into the water.
Infusions can be either warm or cool, depending on the purpose. While warm infusions are more common (wherein we boil water and then pour it over the material to steep), there are situations wherein we would benefit from using cooler water. For example, Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) is a well-known nervine whose sedative qualities are nullified by high heat. In this case we would boil water, let it cool below a simmer, then pour it over the herb. Another example would be mucilaginous herbs such as Slippery Elm (Ulmus rubra) or Marshmallow (Althea officinalis) which will yield greater demulcent effects by steeping overnight in cool water.
So we see that the exact method of infusion can vary depending on what types of plants we are using, but the general principle remains. We want to allow our plant material the sufficient quantity and steeping time to yield a more beneficial end product. While we will go into further specifics on the preparations for each plant as well as formulations in later lessons, for now we will present the fundamental method for infusion making that you can experiment with easily.
Materials:
1oz. dried plant material (leaf or flower)
1qt. water
1qt. mason jar
fine mesh strainer
Directions:
Take the 1qt. mason jar and add in 1oz. by weight of the dried plant material.
Bring 1qt. of water to a boil and pour it over the plant material to fill the jar. Be cautious here as the jar may crack if the temperature difference is too great. Take it slowly and make sure the jar is sufficiently warm prior to adding the water.
Stir to thoroughly mix the plant material into the water.
Cap the jar and allow to steep for at least 4 hours or overnight for a fuller extraction.
Strain the liquid out as needed for serving. Keep any unused portion refrigerated and store no more than a week.
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