I used to hate herbal tea. I drank it for medicinal purposes, but it was a chore. But then I learned The Secret, the one that makes herbal tea not only palatable, but enjoyable. Tasty. Delightful, even. I will tell it to you now:

Herbal tea is not tea.

Duh, you say, but let me explain further.

Herbal tea is not tea, and it will suck if you treat it like tea.

Actual tea, as in the tea plant Camellia sinensis, has very specific steep times and temperatures. This varies by variety (green vs black vs white), but it all comes down to a common factor:

Tea is high in tannins.

Tannins make stuff bitter. Tannins are released from the tea if you heat it too high or too long (again, specifics depend on variety but the point stands). If you steep it too long, BOOM, tannins. You put it in water that is still boiling or hasn’t cooled down enough from boiling? TANNINS. You get nasty, bitter, burnt-grass-tasting tea.

Herbal tea almost universally doesn’t have tannins. This means you almost universally can’t over-steep herbal tea. And in fact, and listen up because this is the practical part of the secret, you need to steep it way longer than actual tea if you want to get the flavors into the water!

Those recommended steep times on your herbal tea box are based off actual tea (black tea to be specific). It’s usually somewhere around 5-7 minutes, but what you actually need is something like 10-15 minutes.

And most conventional tea-making wisdom will tell you to not put the water in too soon after boiling, but again, that’s for tannin-rich Camellia sinensis. You could literally boil* your herbal tea if you wanted. It might make it slightly less sweet depending on variety, and you will probably bust your tea bag doing so, but my point is that you should put as hot of water as you can get into your steeping vessel. As in kettle starts whistling, pour it in immediately over the tea bag. Then let it sit for 10-15 minutes as discussed above.

The only exceptions that I know of personally are meadowsweet, red raspberry leaf, and yarrow, and only one of those is a very common herbal tea ingredient. And honestly, it’s not even high enough in tannins to affect your whole cup if it’s just part of a blend.

So please stop drinking weak plant-adjacent water and start getting the actual flavors you paid for.

*I have actually just dumped herbs in a pot and boiled them and it made a delicious tea. I used lavender, chamomile, lemon balm, and mint, all of which I’d grown myself, and literally just tossed the fresh-picked sprigs into a pot and boiled the crap out of it for close to 10 minutes because I forgot about it while I was rearranging the freezer. It was delicious and not bitter at all despite being a color I can only describe as “positively murky,” and I could taste every single one of the herbs I put in there. It also made my whole apartment smell like a sunny meadow. Do with this information what you will. Am I recommending you boil the devil out of your herbal tea bags? Not necessarily. But I’m also not not recommending it.