Cinnamon Teas

Ceylon cinnamon tea

Six blends, six different brews

Most cinnamon tea is brewed wrong, and it is usually a timing problem rather than a quality one. Pure bark needs twenty minutes. Green tea needs two. Here is what each blend wants, what it tastes like, and what to drink it with.

Start here if you are new to it

Cinnamon tea covers two quite different drinks that get sold under one name, and the difference matters more than the brand on the tin.

Infusions are cinnamon bark and hot water, with no tea leaf in them at all. No caffeine, no tannin, and they need a long steep, fifteen to twenty five minutes, because bark gives up its oils slowly. Pull one out at three minutes and you will think it is weak.

Blends put cinnamon with actual tea leaf, usually black or green. These behave like tea: short steep, caffeine, tannin, and they go bitter if you forget about them. Three to five minutes for black, two for green.

Getting this one distinction right fixes most bad cups. The full brewing reference has the numbers for all six side by side.

Ceylon or cassia

Nearly all supermarket cinnamon is cassia, a different species that is hotter, sharper and much higher in coumarin. Ceylon cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, is sweeter and more floral, and it is the one that survives a long steep without turning harsh.

If a tea does not say which it uses, assume cassia. The quickest test is the stick itself: Ceylon bark is cut thin and rolls into many fine papery layers, while cassia curls inward from both edges into one hard tube. The full comparison is here.