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🌱 There’s nothing like a fresh cup of basil tea, straight from your garden. In an endless array of color and nuanced flavor, with delightful basil varieties from all over the globe. Whether it’s a refreshing ice-cold summer quencher or a warm and comforting cup on a cold winter night, your homegrown fresh or dried basil is sure to delight you. And store-bought basil works well too!
Table of Contents
🍵 Why Basil Tea?
If you’ve been using basil in some of the more traditional culinary preparations, it may not have occurred to you to use it to make tea. But basil tea from your garden (or from the store) makes one hell of a refreshing and comforting drink.
You can make basil tea fresh or dried, and you can steep it on its own or with tea leaves or other herbs. And there are so many varieties of basil to grow and use to make captivating and flavorful tea! All of the photos of basil in this post are from my herb garden. It’s such a fun and easy herb to grow.
🌸 Why Trim Your Basil Flowers?
If you’re growing basil, one of the best ways to keep the plant lush and full of volume is to regularly prune off the flowers. I do this every week during the growing season. Regular pruning encourages lateral branching, fuller growth, and the continued production of plenty of leaves.
This will leave you with plenty of flowers after trimming. Why not brew them into tea while you’re at it? It’s a win-win situation for both you and your plants.
💚💜 Global Basil Flavor and Color Variations
I’ve been told by countless people that they didn’t realize there was more than one type of basil. I’m here to tell you that I’ve grown many varieties of basil for years from all over the world, and I’m not even close to done exploring them all. There are so many wonderful types for you to experience! I hope you’ll look into the wonder to be found in discovering and savoring new varieties.
Each variety has its own origin, cultural significance, color, growth habit, and irresistibly unique flavor profile. Here are the 83 varieties of basil from around the world that I’ve grown and posted about recently. Please check them out and find some that are personally special for you to grow and experience. These posts include photos, descriptions, and info on growing this unique and captivating herb:
38 Types of Basil to Grow in Your Herb Garden, Part 1
45 Types of Basil to Grow in Your Herb Garden, Part 2
This year, I’m growing many “returning champions,” which are some favorites from the links above, as well as several more that are new to me. I’m always excited to experience new varieties from across the globe each year!
😜 Basil Tea Taste Test Results (Lemon, Thai, Spiced, and 3 More Combinations!)
We’ve had several taste testers evaluate some basil tea variety combinations from the herb garden. And we’ve adored every sip we tried. This is just a small sampling of the varieties available for you to grow, and it should give you a wonderful idea of the delightful flavors you can experience with your basil tea.
Lemon Basil Tea
Blend tested: Everleaf Lemon, Mrs. Burns Lemon, Sweet Dani Lemon
Taste test notes from our testers: Gorgeously lemony in both fragrance and flavor, invigorating, delightful, zesty, lemongrass, lemon verbena, bright, light, rosemary tang.
Thai Basil Tea
Blend tested: Golden Mountain Sweet Thai, Siam Queen Thai, Thai Sweet
Taste test notes from our testers: Luscious anise, rainwater, cool breeze, young greens, licorice, lighter, classic basil aftertaste, sweet, very good.
Spiced Basil Tea
Blend tested: Blue Spice, Tulsi Temperate
Taste test notes from our testers: Cinnamon, sweet spices, fresh, clean streams, cardamom, candied basil, light, slightly sweet, floral.
Basil Tea with Green Leaves and Green Flowers
Blend tested: African Spice, British, Dolly, Italian Mountain Sweet, Siracusa, Zanzico
Taste test notes from our testers: Classic basil, sweet, herbaceous and fresh, light, so refreshing, licorice.
Basil Tea with Green Leaves and Purple Flowers
Blend tested: African Blue, Batik, Christmas, Corsican, Feleny, Mrihani
Taste test notes from our testers: Toasted bread, sun-baked hay, caraway, fresh grapes, nice basil spice, savory, herbal.
Basil Tea with Purple Leaves and Purple Flowers
Blend tested: Ararat, Opalescent, Persian, Purple Ball, Purple Delight, Purple Ruffles, Round Midnight
Taste test notes from our testers: Deep streams, damp fall leaves, raisins, petrichor, warm, dark, deep, sweet, herbaceous.
🌿 Fresh or Dried, Flowers or Leaves
Look, you don’t even need a recipe for this. The fun is all in the experimentation! And there are so many wonderful ways to customize your basil tea. You can make it fresh or dried, you can use your freshly trimmed flowers or leaves, and you can drink it hot or iced. There are so many endlessly flavorful ways to experience basil tea.
But just for a basic guideline that works for us, I’ve found that 40 g of fresh basil leaves and/or flowers per cup (236 mL) of water has worked well in trials, as has 4 g of dried basil. We’ve brought the water to a boil and steeped the basil for 10 minutes, whether fresh or dried.
But please feel free to customize it to your taste! This is the fun of it. I hope you’ll experiment with a wide range of colors, flavors, and combinations.
♨️❄️ Delicious Hot or Iced
Basil tea is delightfully refreshing iced on a hot summer day, and it’s also deeply comforting and warming on a cold and blustery winter night. If you’d like, you can trim your fresh flowers and leaves and use them in the summer, and then dry the rest of your basil at the end of the growing season to last you all year long.
🌱 Perfect with Tea and Herbal Infusions
With Tea
We’ve tested basil brewed both on its own and steeped with the following teas. All of these combinations have been divine:
Mei Leaf White Peony white tea
Mei Leaf Superior Iron Goddess oolong tea
Mei Leaf Bailu Gold black tea
Mei Leaf Jade Arrow green tea
With Other Herbal Infusions
And we’ve also tested blending basil tea in combination with several special standalone brews. All of these have been delightful as well:
Rooibos
Osmanthus
Dried jasmine flowers
Rose buds
Dried lavender flowers
Butterfly pea flowers
Chrysanthemum flowers
So now you know there are endless ways for you to enjoy brewing your basil, both alone and in conjunction with so many other flavors. Please let me know in the comments below how you best enjoy sipping your basil! 🌿
☕ Basil Flower and Leaf Tea Recipe
Basil Flower and Leaf Tea, Fresh or Dried, Hot or Iced
- 40 grams Fresh basil flowers and/or leaves, or 4 grams dried (or more to taste)
- 1 cup (236 mL) Boiling water
- Step 1Weigh your fresh or dried basil with a digital scale. Add to a tea strainer in your favorite teacup.
- Step 2Pour the boiling water over your basil and let it steep for 10 minutes.
- Step 3Remove the basil. Drink as is, sweeten, and/or add ice if desired. Enjoy!
✏️ Have You Made Basil Tea?
I’d love to hear about your experiences. Please let me know in the comments below!
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🌱Shell
Such a great article! I remember being surprised the first time I tried holy basil tea. The flavor was so different from the culinary basil varieties I was familiar with. I'd been reading about its adaptogenic properties, so I decided to grow some the following year! I sweetened my first homemade cup with honey from my beehive, and it had this lovely clove-like flavor with just the right amount of sweetness. The bees got a little pinky-up toast for their contribution. 🐝
I had to come back and let you know my basil grew flowers! They're so tiny 😆 but it counts