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How Hard is it to make a cup of anise seed tea? Just pour some hot water over the teabag and you’re done. Right? Not quite.
There are a few very simple things to consider when you go to make your tea. These will increase the flavor and make it one of the best cups of teas that you can possibly have.
In this case, we’re going to talk about anise seed tea. This is a wonderful seed herbal tea that you can find in many tea shops around the world.
It’s not the most popular seed herbal tea but it is a very interesting one with a nice flavor. You can check out our full flavor profile of anise seed tea right here.
So let’s dive in to find out the proper tools and essential brewing instructions. These are what you will need to craft your perfect cup of anise seed tea.
For this article, I used Celebration Herbals Organic Anise Seed Tea, available on Amazon.
Steeping Tools For Anise Seed Tea
Before we even begin to steep our tea we need to take it into consideration. A couple of tools that we’re going to need to make this cup of anise tea great.
We’ll start off with one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of making a great cup of tea. Using the proper water.
Use The Right Water
You can ruin your cup of tea before you even began to boil the water. We need to find balanced pH water that isn’t going to interfere with any of the flavors of the anise seed.
The two ideal places to get your water are bottled spring water and filtered tap water. Unfiltered tap water is not a great idea but it’s what a lot of people use.
All the additives, metals, and minerals, in tap water, are going to affect the taste of your tea. To what extent depends on how many minerals are in the tap water and the type of tea.
Filtered Tap Water
The best bet is to get a filter that is going to filter out most of these metals and minerals. Get a pure cup of filter tap water that is going to leave nothing but the flavor of the tea.
Spring Water Works the same way although you do have to deal with the plastic bottles piling up. Because you will be using a lot of water to make your tea a few times a day.
It is really up to you to choose which one you’re more comfortable with and work from there. The important thing is not to pick mineral water because those minerals will affect the taste of your tea.
Pass On Distilled Water
I think that it is also important not to get distilled water. If you take everything out of the water then the tea is going to be flat and not taste as it should.
Springwater and filtered tap water work equally well for you’re anise seed tea. Anise Tea Has a pretty strong flavor. Even if you don’t get a perfect cup of water then it will still get a decent cup of tea. But the difference is noticeable if you use the proper type of water.
Loose Or Bagged Tea
Next, we need to decide how to get our tea into the water to infuse it. For most tea, you’re going to have a few different ways of doing that. Whether it’s loose-leaf or with an infuser or bag of tea.
However, for seed teas, the options become quite a bit limited because of the nature of the seeds themselves.
For many types of teas, you can simply take loose tea and put it in an infuser. Then drop the infuser into the water and then steep your tea with that.
It works pretty well but there are limitations to it. Essentially you want to give your loose leaf tea room to expand. That doesn’t really apply to seen tea. So it is not really an issue.
Use An Infuser?
Depending on the seed you might need to grind or break the seeds. This will help extract the flavor a bit more. However, for anise seed, I think steeping the whole seed works fine.
Typically the holes in an infuser are going to be too big for the ground-up seeds. They will just seep out in the water. You’ll have seed residue that’s not going to dissolve in the water. But for the whole seeds, an infuser should be fine.
You run into the same problem if you try to grind up the seeds and put them into the hot water without an infuser you’re going to have ground up seeds in your tea and it’s not going to be the best experience.
There are certainly ways that you can do this if you buy your own tea bags and then put the ground up anise seed in it that can certainly work.
But for Simplicity’s sake, I always recommend using bags for your seed herbal teas. Most of the time these cities are going to come pre-packaged in bags anyway so you don’t really have to think about it.
Some of the more popular seeds, like fennel and anise, can be bought in bulk and you can certainly grind them up and make your own teabags out of them.
The bottom line here is whenever I make a seed tea I always try and find pre-made bags to make the tea out of. That’s simply my recommendation and you can use it as a place to start on your journey into seed herbal teas.
David Monniaux [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]
Anise Seed Tea Steeping Essentials
Now that we have our water and our delivery method sort it out we’re going to need to figure out exactly the time and temperature and amount of anise seed we need to make the perfect cup of anise seed tea.
The Ideal Water Temperature
205°F/96°C Is a great place to start for steeping your cup of anise seed tea. Like most herbal teas, anise seed is hardier than true teas like green tea, check out our favorites, and can take a much higher temperature than regular teas can.
This is slightly below boiling so jest let your water sit for a minute after boiling it to bring the temperature down a little bit.
You can find a handy Celcius to Fahrenheit conversion tool right here.
The Steep Time For Anise Seed Tea
Herbal teas tend to take a little bit longer to fully steep than their true tea cousins. Some herbal flower teas can take 7 to 10 minutes or more to really draw out the flavor.
For a bagged anise seed tea I recommend starting at about 4 or 5 minutes for your steep and then customizing it to your particular tastes.
Whether your steep time goes up or down is going to depend on your individual tastes for your cup of anise seed tea. You can go as high as 10 minutes if you feel the need, the anise seed tea can take it.
Amount Of Anise Seed Tea
My experience with anise seed tea has always been bagged tea. So one bag is going to be the ideal amount for most people. If you want stronger tea then add an additional bag.
It is your cup of tea, you can do as you please. If you are going to the loose-seed route, I would recommend around 1-2 teaspoons of ground seed for an 8-10oz cup of water. Then adjust to your individual tastes.
Always cover your tea when you are steeping it. This helps maintain the proper steeping temperature and traps in the flavor.
Anise Seed Tea Steeping Instructions Quick Recap
- Spring Or Filtered Tap Water.
- I prefer bagged tea for herbal seed teas.
- 205°F/96°C Is a great starting temperature.
- 4 or 5 minutes covered steep is what I prefer
- 1 bag or 1-2 teaspoons of ground anise seed.
Finishing The “Perfect” Cup Of Anise Tea
I always like to use the term perfect Loosely when it comes to crafting your own cup of tea.
What I find perfect in my tea you probably will not.
I almost never add a sweetener to my tea you may add a cube of sugar to every cup of tea you drink.
The point is every single cup of tea is going to be unique to the person creating it for themselves. So think of these instructions and tips as a starting point for your journey to find your perfect cup of Anise seed tea.
You’ll know when you find it that perfect cup because it will just seem like it should have been this way the entire time.
It’s also a great feeling to find the exact cup of tea that you want through a little bit of trial and error and a little bit of experimentation.
That’s the fun thing about being a tea drinker is there’s always room to tweak the tea a little bit until you find the perfect balance for your cup of anise seed tea.
Looking for other great herbal infusion options, then check out Buddha Teas’ amazing selection of herbal teas.
Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful day.