Loose leaf has a reputation for being fussy. It isn't. It just asks for about ninety seconds more attention than a teabag, and gives back considerably more than ninety seconds' worth.
Here's what actually matters.
One teaspoon per cup
That's the starting point for almost every herbal blend, ours included. Herbs are lighter and bulkier than black tea, so a teaspoon of a flower-heavy blend looks like a lot more than a teaspoon of leaf. Trust the spoon, not your eyes.
If your cup is a mug rather than a teacup, use a heaped teaspoon.
Freshly boiled water
For herbal blends, full boil is right. This is one place herbal tea is more forgiving than green tea, which scorches above about 80°C. Roots, barks and berries want heat to give anything up at all.
Freshly boiled matters more than people expect. Water that's been sitting in the kettle all morning and been reboiled three times has lost most of its dissolved oxygen, and the cup tastes flat and slightly dull. Fill the kettle fresh.
Steep longer than you think
Five to seven minutes for most blends. This is where beginners go wrong — a two-minute steep out of teabag habit gives you a cup of pale, disappointing water and the conclusion that loose leaf isn't worth the trouble.
Herbal infusions don't get bitter the way black tea does when over-steeped. You have room to experiment. Roots and barks can take longer still — eight, ten minutes is fine, and often better.
Give the leaves room
The single biggest upgrade most people can make: stop using those little mesh ball infusers. They're sold everywhere and they're bad at the one job they have. Leaves need to unfurl and move through the water. Crammed into a ball the size of a walnut, they can't.
Use a basket infuser that fills most of the mug, a teapot with a wide strainer, or nothing at all — brew loose in the pot and pour through a strainer. The difference is not subtle.
Cover it
Put a saucer or lid over the cup while it steeps. What you can smell rising off the top is aromatic compounds leaving. That's the part you wanted.
Cold-steeping, which is easier
Same leaf, cold water, a jug in the fridge overnight. Strain in the morning. It produces something rounder and sweeter than iced hot tea, with none of the cloudiness, and takes about forty seconds of effort the night before.
Works with every one of our blends. It's particularly good with anything hibiscus-forward.
Two mistakes worth naming
Squeezing the infuser. Pressing the last drops out of a wet basket seems thrifty. It pushes fine particulate and astringency into an otherwise clean cup. Let it drip and let it go.
Storing it badly. Heat, light and air are what turn a good blend into hay. Keep it in something opaque and sealed, in a cupboard — not in a pretty glass jar on a sunny shelf. Not above the kettle, which is the warmest and steamiest spot in the kitchen and where almost everyone puts it.
And then
That's it. Spoon, boiling water, five to seven minutes, room to move, cover it.
Everything after that is preference, and preference is the interesting part.
