Tea, infusion or tisane
"This sort of begs the question 'what is tea'? Can tea be made without tea leaves? Does putting any collection of herbs into hot water make tea? Tea and coffee as I know them both contain 'caffeine' which is certainly not sleep inducing, quite the opposite."
Graham S
This is another quickie inspired by my friend Graham's comment above, on my post about tea to sleep by. And he is absolutely right of course. Technically tea whether, black, green or white, Assam, Lapsang Souchong or Darjeeling all comes from the same plant in the camellia family. Herbal 'teas' are not tea - they are tisanes made by infusing or decocting herbs in water. Just so you know the difference - in an infusion you pour boiling water over your herb and in a decoction you put the herb into boiling water. I'm not really sure why this should make a difference although The Spruce Eats maintains that decocting releases more essential oils and flavour. Why? I just don't get that.
Anyway for one of these herbal infusions or decoctions you leave your herb or collection of herbs, whether it be leaves, seeds, fruit, roots, bark or any other part you can think of, in the hot water to steep (preferably covered so that the flavour remains in the cup) for a varying amount of time depending on whether you want it strong or weak.
I used to have a lot of lemon balm in my garden and I did sometimes infuse some of it in a cup and drink it. It had a rather nice taste and is supposed to be calming. Other herbs have different benefits according to the herbalists and I won't go into them all here. That's not the purpose of this post. Tisanes - a much nicer word it seems to me - have been used since ancient times and millions of words have been written about the various benefits of particular herbs. After all that's what a lot of modern day medicines are is it not - combinations of chemicals derived from plants?
The current vogue though is for cold water infusions. Twinings started this I think, and others have followed - either tea bags (let's call them that for ease of description) - or bottles and other contraptions in which to infuse. It's taking putting a slice of lemon or cucumber or a mint leaf in your water to make it taste nice into the commercial sphere. Because I think the emphasis here is flavour rather than health benefit.
And I guess if people go for this rather than sugary drinks then it's a good thing. But I suspect it's only the health freaks who can't go anywhere without their drink bottle who will go for it. The flavours are sweet and fruity rather than 'herbal'. We'll see.
And Graham is right as well about there being no caffeine in herbal 'teas'. Caffeine is in tea and coffee, but not herbs. And yes I know about the counter-intuitive thing about coffee and sleep, but genuinely one of Michael Mosley's little experiments about sleep suggested that a cup of coffee just before bed could help you get to sleep. Of course I cannot find the evidence for this now so maybe I dreamt it.
So yes herbal 'teas' are not really tea, and cold infusions are really all about taste - and if it gets people to drink more water all well and good I suppose. Though they really don't have to buy expensive 'tea' bags to do it
