Make Your Own Tea Bags
A warm cup of tea is just the best, isn’t it? And although you can get many delicious varieties of commercial tea bags at the store, it’s much more fun to DIY tea bags and make your own custom tea blends!
With just a little effort, you can easily harvest your own herbs and make simple and nutritious teas. If you prefer loose-leaf teas and want to use a tea ball or tea strainer, that works great. Or if you’d like to make your own homemade tea bags, they are simple, inexpensive, and a fun project.
Why Make Your Own Tea Bags?
On our farm, we have several wild plants that we can use to make teas, in addition to herbs that we grow ourselves. Often times I’ll dry them and make them into loose-leaf tea by steeping them in a tea ball.
Recently I started taking my dried herbs and making simple tea bags. Here are a few reasons why you might want to make your own, too!
- It’s less messy. The tea is already in a neat little package. No tea ball to wash or used, loose leaves to dispose of.
- You will get less tea residue. Unless you were planning to read your tea leaves, it is preferable to not have little chunks of herbs floating around in your tea. Using a tea bag will result in less plant bits in your tea.
- It is easy to do. All you’ll need is an iron, herbs, and some empty tea bags.
- It makes a great gift. What better gift for a special occasion than homemade tea? If you want to get even fancier for a gift, you could add paper tags to your bags with cotton, unbleached embroidery thread or baker’s twine.
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Supplies You’ll Need
You only need three things to make your own tea bags!
- Dried herb of choice (or your own blend of herbs)
- Heat sealable tea bags
- An iron
How to Make Your Own Tea Bags
Harvest and Prepare Your Plant Material.
You can check out my post on nettles for more information about how to do this. You can always take the easy way and buy loose herbs at your co-op, too.
Heat Your Iron
Pre-heat your iron to the cotton setting. Make sure you place down a thick towel if you are doing this on a kitchen counter or anywhere other than an ironing board.
Fill The Tea Bags
Fill the tea bags about halfway full. Resist the urge to fill them to the top tea bag, as it will be harder to seal them and the herbs won’t steep as well.
Seal the Tea Bag
Make sure there is no plant material along the sealing area, as any remaining bits will interfere with the heat-sensitive seam. If you want to place twine in your bags, tuck the string in before you heat seal it.
Press your iron on the seal for five seconds.
Allow to cool momentarily, and you are done!
Store
Store your tea bags in a cool, dark place. You can keep them in a metal tin, mason jar, or a small box. If you use an old tea box, make sure that it doesn’t have a strong smell from the previous tea or it will get absorbed by your new tea.
Easy Herbs for Tea
There are several herbs that are easily grown and can be used to make a single ingredient tea. My favorite options are:
You can also make different blends for flavor or health benefits. I’ll be going into a more detailed post on that soon!
Tips for Brewing Your Tea
For the purest tea, use filtered water when possible. According to Twinings, you want to use cool, fresh, water, because it still has oxygen in it that will bring out more of the tea’s flavor.
Do not use boiling water. Use very hot water instead. It sounds crazy, but boiling water can actually burn your plant and cause it to taste a little off or not release all of its benefits.
Steeping times vary on teas. For my fresh herbal teas, I typically will do around a 5-minute steep. If you let the tea bag steep much longer than that, the tea may start to get bitter.
It all depends on what herb you are using and your own personal preference. Start with 3-5 minutes and taste. If you want a stronger flavor, let it steep longer.
Be sure to cover your tea. Valuable oils in your plant can escape your tea in the steam. Covering it keeps them in your perfect cup of tea, where they belong!
Harvesting and Drying Fresh Herbs for Tea
You can easily harvest fresh herbs from your garden or around your home to make tea.
Herbs should always be gathered from places you know are free from herbicides and pesticides. When foraging, make sure you always leave more of a plant than you take. Be sure to give them a quick rinse before using in teas.
To dry them, hang them for several days in loose bunches, or dry in a dehydrator at its lowest setting for several hours, until the leaves crumble when you pinch them with your fingers.
