Do tea-like drinks typically require the plant material be dried or processed?
Many of the plants in my garden have leaves or flowers that are, in various places, described as being good for making a herbal tea. A couple of examples are lemon balm leaves (Melissa officinalis) and strawberry guava leaves (Psidium littorale). I also have a number of different varieties of mint.
When you buy herbal teas, the leaves or flowers (or bark) that the tea is made from are obviously dried. Is the drying process an essential aspect of the tea preparation, or is that simply for storage and preservation? If you have access to the raw ingredient, do you need to dry or process it in some way first or can the tea be made satisfactorily without any drying or processing?
Best Answer
Dried vegetation usually suffers cell wall degradation. So when rehydrated all the oils and flavours will easily leach out. This is very desirable for vegetation you want to extract oils and flavours from
Many "teas" are also partially fermented for additional flavour. This processes need to be stopped otherwise the whole plant will be consumed. Drying is the simplest way to stop fermentation, and make the product storable and transportable
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Does tea need to be dried?
Undried Fresh Tea vs Dried TeaFresh tea leaves can be enjoyed without being dried by simply flash-freezing them. This allows all of the valued nutrients in the fresh leaf to be retained. Dried teas are essentially cooked tea leaves. Dried tea is how tea leaves have been sold on the market for a millennium.Is tea processed?
Once the tea leaves have been plucked, they are taken to be processed at a tea factory.... After the tea leaves have been plucked, the real production of tea begins. The leaves are first taken to a tea factory to be processed.Do you need to dry herbs for tea?
You can dry herbs several different ways, and you can then store them for several months to enjoy herbal tea long after the growing season is over. Growing herbs is a wonderful process, but before they can be used in tea they will need to be dried.Why do we dry tea leaves?
Leaves are often dried to use as decorations in craft projects, or to preserve herbs for use in cooking. There are many ways to achieve either result, so take the time to sort through them to find those which work best for your purpose(s).Never Use an Oven or Dehydrator to Dry Herbs Again With This Century Old Method
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Answer 2
Certainly you can make tea from fresh herbs! In most cases, the dried part of whatever you're using is preferable because of storage and preservation, as you mentioned, but fresh herbs tend to be weaker tasting than their dried counterparts. Unfortunately, I don't know why this is.
The way to combat this is to simply use more of whatever you're making tea from. If you find an herbal tea recipe and it calls for 5 grams of dried herb, use 10-15 grams of fresh herb (depending on your taste). But feel free to experiment and see what's good for you. Another thing to keep in mind is that short steeping times are often not enough to extract the beneficial nutrients from a given herb - again this depends on the specific plant and your taste, but 4 hours to overnight is usually what's recommended.
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