Romanticize 13: Home Brew
How to make your own herbal tea, with meaning.
I’ve been an avid tea drinker since I was ten or so, when I created a routine that I still uphold all these years later. Whenever I started a new book, I’d pick a blend to suit my mood and sip it while cracking the spine and diving in. The flush of contentment I get from the pairing still never fails—the aroma, the warmth, the flavor, the feel of the steam on my face, the fresh-book scent, the texture of the pages between my fingertips.
Suffice it to say: books and tea are two things I’ve always got on hand. I also happen to have a lot of loose herbs, which made me wonder: are the ingredients to create a custom herbal tea blend right here in my pantry? Turns out, they are—and you probably have a bunch, too! In today’s Romanticize, I guide you through how to make your own unique brew, and how to dive into the meaning of the herbs you choose in order to infuse your mixture with intention.
The Romanticize
Blend your own herbal tea.
The Advice
There are many resources online that you can refer to for this—I don’t have much of a sense for flavor balancing, so I leaned into internet advice. One very helpful place to start is with portioning: use two parts of a grounding herb as your base (think: tulsi basil, nettle, or red raspberry leaves), one part of a floral pick (like rose, chamomile, or lavender), one part of a fruit note (like hibiscus, juniper, or citrus peel), and one part of an ending flourish (such as cooling mint or spicy cinnamon).
The internet is also a great place to find the meaning of your herbs—though I happen to have a couple of books on my shelf that I love referring to, Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs and The Illustrated Herbiary. You can use the herbal properties to drive your blend, combining items that impart protection, or help with self-love, for example. While sipping, thank each herb for its properties and meditate on the intention gleaned from their meanings. No need to go out and buy ingredients solely for this project—just hunt through your cabinets and use what’s on hand.
I suggest making very tiny batches of your tea blends to test them out at first, so you don’t waste your herbs. None of the three I tried below were quite right, but they did help me begin to build an understanding of flavor balance and pairing preferences.
You can use a tea strainer, looseleaf tea bags, or even just a small handheld mesh strainer to remove your herb blend once it’s steeped. I tend to leave my teabags in, to extract every bit of goodness from the herbs as I sip.
The Inspiration
I must say I felt like a proper kitchen witch pulling out all my jars of herbs and dreaming up combinations, scooping and portioning and stirring and brewing. I decided to lean more into the herbal notes than their meanings to create my combinations, though it was interesting to see some similar properties arise among my picks. My attempts weren’t quite successful, but the practice definitely sparked an interest in playing with flavors until I get them right!
For my first combination, I went with a base of nettle (protection, healing), rose (love, healing), hibiscus (love, divination), and thyme (purification, healing). The brewed color was gorgeous, but the thyme (even just the small pinch I included) overpowered the other notes.
Next, I blended a base of yarrow (courage, love), chamomile (calming, wealth), juniper (protection, health), and mint (healing, protection). I think I’ll swap out the yarrow for nettle next time, as it imparted too much bitterness, and double up the juniper for a bit more of a fruity flavor.
Last, I mixed tulsi basil (protection, wealth), calendula (confidence, love), anise (protection, purification), and valerian root (protection, love). This one was the least successful—not terribly flavorful all around. I’ll probably swap something else for the bitter valerian and up the anise next time.
I’d love to know the results of your Romanticize—feel free to share your experience in the comments, or tag me on Instagram. Until next Wednesday, fellow romantics!