Buying
Ceylon cinnamon vs cassia
Check the label for Cinnamomum verum or the word Ceylon. If it says neither, it is cassia. Look at the stick too: Ceylon rolls into thin papery layers, cassia curls as one thick slab. For long steeps, Ceylon stays sweet where cassia turns harsh.
Two different plants
Cinnamon is not one spice. Cinnamomum verum, often sold as Ceylon or true cinnamon, comes mainly from Sri Lanka. Cinnamomum cassia and its close relatives come mostly from China, Indonesia and Vietnam, and make up the overwhelming majority of what is sold simply as cinnamon worldwide.
They are related, and in a cinnamon bun nobody would complain. In a cup of tea steeped for twenty minutes, the difference is hard to miss.
Telling them apart
By the stick
This is the quickest test. Ceylon bark is cut thin and rolls up into many fine layers, a bit like a cigar, and crumbles if you press it. Cassia is thicker, curls inward from both edges into a single hard tube, and will not break without a knife.
By colour
Ceylon runs tan to light brown. Cassia is darker, often reddish brown. Alba, the grade used in these blends, is the palest Ceylon grade of all.
By taste
Ceylon is sweeter, lighter, with a slight citrus and floral edge. Cassia is hotter and more aggressive, the flavour most people picture when they think of cinnamon, because it is what they have always had.
By label
Ground cinnamon gives you none of the visual clues, so the label is all you have. Look for Cinnamomum verum, Ceylon, or true cinnamon. If the packet just says cinnamon and names no species, assume cassia, because any producer paying Ceylon prices says so.
Why it matters in a long steep
A pure cinnamon infusion sits in boiling water for twenty minutes or more. That is a long extraction, and it pulls out everything the bark has.
With Ceylon the result rounds out and sweetens. With cassia the same treatment pulls the harsh, hot compounds forward, and you end up with something closer to a cough remedy than a tea. The same steep that makes Ceylon better makes cassia worse.
This is also why so much supermarket cinnamon tea comes with instructions saying three to five minutes. It is cassia, and three minutes is as long as it can stand.
Coumarin
Cassia contains considerably more coumarin than Ceylon does. Several food safety bodies, including the German BfR and EFSA, have published tolerable intake guidance on coumarin, which is why the comparison gets raised so often.
The Ceylon cinnamon in these blends sits below 0.04%. That is a compositional fact about the spice rather than a claim about what cinnamon tea does for anyone, and this site makes no health claims of any kind.
What to do with this
- Check the species on the label before you buy, every time.
- If you have sticks already, look at the cross-section. Many thin layers is Ceylon.
- If you are steeping longer than five minutes, use Ceylon.
- Keep whichever you have airtight and out of the light. The flavour lives in the oils, and oils go stale.
Then go and look at the brewing times, which are the other half of getting a decent cup.