Making Your Own Tea Blends Is Easy—Tea Experts Share How to Start

For lovers of the leaf, just about any hour of the day constitutes tea time. While there's no shortage of commercially available varieties to fill that quintessential cup, sometimes it's fun to mix it up—especially if you're craving something, well, out-of-the-box. That's where making your own tea blends comes in. 

What’s the secret behind crafting your own—and how can you tell if you’re combining the right stuff? We asked one of the founders of a specialty tea company and a chef with tea-blending bona fides for a few pointers. Let's get brewing!

What Are Tea Blends?

Tea blends combine two or more ingredients, including (but not limited to) teas, herbs, flowers, and essential oils. Technically, true tea is made from the Camellia sinensis plant, while tisanes or herbal infusions are made from flowers, herbs, and other plant materials. But "tea" is often used broadly, as we use it here, to include tisanes and infusions as well as true tea.

Some of the teas you drink in heavy rotation are blends. "English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast are classic examples of different types of black tea blended together (often a mix of Indian, Sri Lankan, and Kenyan teas) to give you a really robust black tea that can be had with milk," says Esha Chhabra, co-founder of Alaya Tea, which sources its organic and regenerative organic teas from small farmers and tea estates in India, including Darjeeling, Assam, and Uttar Pradesh.

Choose Your Ingredients

Ingredients should enhance each other, not compete for domination.

Less Is More

When making tea blends, there are no ironclad rules, but if you want to achieve peak taste, it's wise to follow a few guidelines. "We've taken an approach of keeping things simple so you can taste each ingredient in our blends," says Chhabra. 

One Alaya herbal blend, she says, combines two complementary good-for-the-tummy ingredients, fennel and peppermint. Another unites potent ginger root and lemongrass with a slightly gingery profile. "The two are also used together in cooking, particularly in Asian cuisine. So they're quite compatible," she says.

Find Balance

Ingredients with powerful personalities may call for a counterpoint, says Nicolaus Balla, chef at COAST Big Sur in California. "Herbs like black sage, hedge nettle, and bay laurel, which grow here, are fairly strong, so they need something to balance them, like mint and orange peel," he says.

Experiment With Different Flavors

When creating your own blends, start with a base of white, black, green, or oolong tea, and for caffeine-free teas, dried herbs like peppermint, tulsi, or chamomile.

Initially, stick to one key flavor profile: floral, spicy, citrusy, or earthy, then zero in on the corresponding ingredients, says Chhabra. "You can also cross over if you want something that's floral and earthy, but just familiarizing yourself with what herbs and spices fall under these broad categories is a great starting place so you can start to play," she says.

Herbs and Fruit

In addition to herbs, incorporate locally available ingredients. "When you go to the market, buy a little bit of dried fruit, and try it with mint—what do you have to lose?" says Balla. Some of his favorite combos include finely sliced slivers of dried apple or pear combined with mint and other herbs. 

Herbs from your planter box or garden, such as rosemary, oregano, thyme, lemon verbena, lemon balm, and sage, can all be easily dried and made into blends, says Chhabra.

(To dry herbs, place them in a colander on your windowsill, bunch them with butcher’s twine, and hang them outdoors, or use a food dehydrator.)

Spices

Spices expand the options for tea blends, so raid your cabinet. "You can use dried ginger, peppercorns, cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves to create a spicy brew,” says Chhabra. Growing up in India, she adds, elaichi chai was a staple. "It's a common take on tea for many Indians."  Balla, meanwhile, accents his iced chai with foraged bay laurel.

Flowers and Foraged Edibles

Foraged ingredients like nettle, dandelion, and chickweed are viable, with one caveat. "Find ingredients that you know and can identify in your area—don't use ingredients where you have to guess what they are, and don't use obscure things," says Balla. 

Flowers, including calendula, lavender, rose, chamomile, jasmine blossoms, and chrysanthemums, are fair game, too—just ensure that they're organic, pesticide-free, and safe to eat.

Start Small

Whatever flavors you opt for, start by experimenting with small quantities. Using a kitchen scale, measure out about 2 to 3 grams of your ingredients, enough to brew one 8-ounce cup of tea. "If you like the ratio of herbs you used, you can then multiply that and make a larger batch. Or you can tweak it a little and try again," says Chhabra. Once you nail down the flavor for one cup, scale up.

Brewing Your Tea Blend

Brew time impacts taste. Some ingredients require a longer steep for their flavors to develop, while others infuse quickly. "So if you've got two ingredients that are the opposite ends of that spectrum, that would not be ideal," says Chhabra.

Loosen Up

Ultimately, Balla says, making your own tea blends comes down to trusting your instincts. "If it tastes delicious to you, you're not wrong. Food can sometimes be too intimidating!" he says.

In other words, go with the flow. "The process should be enjoyable, almost meditative," says Chhabra.

Once you get brewing, you'll be on the road to innovation. "Never make the same thing twice," says Balla.