Ceylon Cinnamon Loose Leaf Tea
One tablespoon of leaf plus one or two pieces of cinnamon bark per cup, boiling water, five minutes. The bark is the dial you turn, not the leaf. An eight ounce pack runs to roughly 75 cups, which makes it the cheapest way to drink this blend every day.
- What it is
- Sri Lankan loose-leaf black tea with natural cinnamon bark
- Caffeine
- Yes, standard black tea
- Water
- 212°F / 100°C, full boil
- Steep
- 5 minutes
- Pack
- 8 oz / 227 g
- Makes
- About 75 cups
What is actually in the pack
Loose Sri Lankan black tea and pieces of real cinnamon bark, sitting together rather than blended into a fixed ratio. That is the whole point of buying it loose: you decide how much bark goes in.
Eight ounces is 227 grams, which works out at roughly 75 cups. At $32 that is about 43 cents a cup, cheaper per cup than any of the bagged blends.
How to brew it
- Boil the water properly, 212°F.
- One tablespoon of leaf per cup.
- One or two pieces of bark, according to how forward you want the cinnamon.
- Five minutes, then strain.
Adjust the bark, leave the leaf alone. A tablespoon of leaf for five minutes is close to right for most people, and if the cup comes out too tannic the answer is less time, not less leaf. If it comes out thin on spice, add a third piece of bark next time.
Filtered or spring water helps here more than it does with the bagged blends. Heavy, mineral-rich water muddies the cinnamon notes, which sit near the top of the flavour and are the first thing to go.
Why bother with loose leaf
Three reasons, in order of how much they matter day to day.
Cost. Roughly half the per-cup price of pyramid bags.
Control. Different days want different cups. Two pieces of bark on a cold morning, one in summer.
Pots. If you are making four cups at once, loose leaf is simply easier than tearing open four bags.
The trade-off is a strainer to rinse. If that is the part that puts you off, the pyramid bags are the same blend in a form that needs nothing washing up.
Iced
Six teaspoons of tea in a pot, a cup and a quarter of just-boiled water, five minutes. Strain into a pitcher quarter-filled with cold water, add ice, top up to a litre. Sweeten in the pitcher rather than the glass, since sugar will not dissolve properly in a cold drink.
Storing it
Keep it airtight and away from light. Cinnamon bark is mostly oil, and oil goes stale when it meets air and sun. A sealed tin in a cupboard beats a nice jar on a windowsill, every time.