Pure Ceylon Cinnamon Tea
Steep one pyramid bag in freshly boiled water for 15 to 25 minutes, not three. Pure cinnamon bark needs time that tea leaf does not. Drink it without milk or sugar, and re-steep the same bag up to four times. Zero caffeine, so it works late at night.
- What it is
- 100% Alba grade Ceylon cinnamon bark. No tea leaf.
- Caffeine
- None
- Water
- 212°F / 100°C, full boil
- Steep
- 15 to 25 minutes
- Pack
- 40 pyramid bags (also 800)
- Makes
- 40 cups, more if you re-steep
What is actually in the bag
Cinnamon bark, and nothing else. No tea leaf, no flavouring, no cassia. That makes this an infusion rather than a tea in the strict sense, which is why it behaves so differently in the cup.
The bark is Alba grade, the thinnest and palest of the Ceylon grades, cut from the innermost layer of young shoots. Alba is normally sold as whole quills to people who want the mildest, sweetest cinnamon available. Putting it through a tea bag is an unusual use of an expensive grade, and it shows up as sweetness rather than heat.
Druera has shipped this blend since 2014, and the bark has come from the same Sri Lankan estate since 2005.
How to brew it
The single thing most people get wrong is treating it like tea.
- Boil water properly. A full rolling boil at 212°F, not the 175°F you would use for green tea.
- One pyramid bag per cup.
- Steep 15 to 25 minutes. Twenty is a good starting point.
- Drink it plain. Milk flattens it and sugar is redundant.
Bark releases its oils slowly. At three minutes you get coloured water with a faint sweetness, which is what makes people think cinnamon tea is weak. At twenty minutes you get a brew with actual body to it.
The bags hold up to four infusions. Each one comes through a little lighter than the last, and the fourth is genuinely worth drinking, which matters at 70 cents a bag.
Iced
Eight bags, two cups of just-boiled water, 15 to 25 minutes. Quarter-fill a pitcher with cold water, pour the concentrate in, add ice and top up to a litre. It takes dilution better than most teas because you brewed it strong in the first place.
What it goes with
It is a palate cleaner more than a companion, so it earns its place after a rich dessert rather than beside one. Dark chocolate, sticky puddings, anything with a lot of butter in it.
Because there is no tannin and no caffeine, there is also no reason not to have a cup at ten at night.
Ceylon, not cassia
Nearly all supermarket cinnamon is cassia, a different species with a harsher, hotter profile and a much higher coumarin content. Ceylon cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) tastes sweeter and more floral, and its coumarin level sits under 0.04%.
For an infusion steeped twenty minutes, that distinction is not academic. A long steep of cassia would be unpleasantly sharp. This one gets rounder the longer you leave it.