How to Make Cannabis Tea: A Complete User Guide
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Cannabis tea is becoming more and more popular for its health-enhancing qualities, and with the onset of colder weather in the northern hemisphere, there’s a seasonal need to boost immunity while also keeping your body warm and well-balanced. Here’s how a drinking a cup of this wellness elixir can help you do just that.
The Wellness Wonders of Cannabis Tea
Cannabis tea can assist you with your pain management routine, respiratory health, optimal brain and nervous system functioning, and cancer treatment plan. Take a look at 3 other ways that it gives a well-rounded lift to your health and wellness.
It Aids with Stress Reduction
Teas of different varieties have been shown to act as stress reducers due to their amino acids and other balancing compounds that are found in the plants’ essential oils. The latest research now reveals how drinking cannabis tea gives you a ‘double-dose’ of calm. In addition to its other relaxing components, cannabis plants contain compounds known as ‘cannabinoids that act to regulate stress responses in your body. This allows them to decrease your incidents of anxiety and worry over the long term, which is proven to be one of the best ways to optimize your immune health.
It Helps Promote Healthy Weight Regulation
The CBD (Cannabidiol) found in cannabis has been shown to be a great weight regulator. It works by increasing a process known as “fat browning“, which actually leads to a faster breakdown of fat, helps inhibit proteins involved in new fat cell creation, and increases metabolic energy expenditures. This helps ensure that your body gets the fats it needs during the winter season for optimal nutrition, while also limiting excess storage that can lead to conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
It Gives Wellness-Boosting Balance to Reduce the Risk for Disease
Cannabis helps your body’s Endocannabinoid System stay healthy and strong. Why is this so important? As it turns out, this key system, which was discovered in the early 1990s, acts as a sort of CEO to the other major systems in your body to ensure that they perform well-executed processes. By properly regulating ‘endocannabinoid‘ receptors that are located throughout your brain and body, the ‘exocannabinoid‘ compounds found in cannabis help your body thrive.
Cannabis Brewing Guide
Because cannabis tea is processed through your digestive tract, its therapeutic benefits usually take 30-60 minutes to take effect, and they last longer than smoking. Typically, symptom relief can continue for between 4-8 hours, which makes cannabis teas especially beneficial for pain management and longer-term relief from a variety of symptoms. This helps cut down on the costs of continuous dosing.
Picking Your Strain
Naturally, you’ll want to pick a cannabis strain that shows the most success in alleviating your specific symptoms. Our App showcases a wide selection of strains, and allow you to find what other people with your same health indicators are using to help heal themselves. You can also enter which strains and dosages aid you most with different symptoms, and view the concentrations of THC and CBD in each strain. Since your entire personal history is at your fingertips, you can even review how your treatment is progressing with your doctor.
Cannabis Strains and Their Pairings
Cannabis strains run the gamut of flavours, from aromatic orange to earthy tobacco. The tea in its basic form can be somewhat bitter to the taste, and that’s why it’s recommended to add regular tea leaves or herbs and spices that complement your strain’s flavours. In addition, Cannabis Sativa strains tend to make you more alert, whereas Cannabis Indica strains are more relaxing. Therefore, adding caffeinated tea leaves to a Sativa strain may make you over-energetic, or it may give you just the boost you need depending on your specific situation.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the common tea types you can use to pair with your Cannabis strains:
Black
These teas are the most fully oxidized, which is why they have turned brown. Oxidation happens whenever leaves are removed from the plant, and can also be sped up by reshaping the leaves. It gives black teas the ability to quickly absorb a variety of bold and distinctive flavours, and adds to their higher levels of caffeine. Chai tea is a popular black variety.
White
By contrast, white teas are the least oxidized and tend to contain the lowest amounts of caffeine of all the types, although this can vary. They also have a more subtle flavour, and are recognizable by their distinctive light leaves.
Green
Green teas tend to be processed very quickly, and that’s why they keep their colour, and contain a wide array of antioxidants and nutrients. Their taste is a bit sharper than the whites, and they have a low to moderate caffeine count.
Oolong
Oolong teas hold elements of both green and black teas, making them a nutritious and flavourful choice that contains moderate amounts of caffeine.
Brewing Teas With THC
The key point to remember when brewing cannabis tea is that cannabinoids found in cannabis, such as THC and CBD, are not water-soluble. This means that a fat or oil must be added to your tea in order to extract these medicinal elements so you can benefit from them. Some people add butter, coconut oil, or a high fat milk directly to the water before adding in the ground cannabis, while others mix their cannabis and butter together first, to form a ‘cannabutter’. Here’s a recipe for ‘cannabutter’, as well as a basic tea recipe:
Cannabutter
What you will need:
1/2 cup of unsalted butter
1/4 ounce or 7 grams of finely ground cannabis buds
Melt your butter on low heat, add the grounds, and simmer for 45 minutes.
Use a spoon to push all the butter through your strainer and into a storage container. Discard the remaining plant matter.
Immediately refrigerate or freeze.
Cannabis Tea
What You Will Need:
1/4 gram of ground cannabis buds
3/4 tsp unsalted butter, coconut oil, or high-fat milk
1 flavoured tea bag or loose-leaf tea to taste
1 cup water
OR
1 tsp cannabutter
1 flavoured tea bag or loose-leaf tea to taste
1 cup water
Cannabis Grounds Tea: Boil your water and add the butter, coconut oil, or high-fat milk until it dissolves. Next, add your cannabis grounds in a strainer or directly into the water, along with your flavoured tea bag or loose-leaf tea. Let the tea simmer for about 15-30 minutes. If need be, strain out your remaining grounds/leaves with a sieve.
Cannabutter Tea: Boil your water and add your cannabutter, along with your flavoured tea bag or loose-leaf tea. Let these simmer for about 15-30 minutes. If need be, strain out your remaining grounds/leaves with a sieve.
Enjoy!
Here Are Some Great Ways to ‘Spice Up’ Your Tea:
- Add a favourite flavour-paired tea bag or loose-leaf to the water as it’s brewing, such as Earl Gray, Blackberry, or Green Tea
- Mix in some honey after your tea is brewed to offset any bitterness
- If you’re using milk as your water-soluble fat, consider adding a tasty chai blend
- Add in some bolder spices such as cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg
Brewing Teas Without THC
This is the simplest brewing method because you can simply add your ground cannabis to the water using a tea strainer, or use loose grounds and a sieve. The brewing time is the same, and can be adjusted according to how strong you’d like your tea to be.
The main drawback of this method is that you won’t get the benefits from the therapeutic cannabinoids found in cannabis, such as THC and CBD, since they are not water-soluble. On the upside, you will still get many of the benefits of cannabis’ vitamins, amino acids, and THCA (which is THC in its raw form). THCA is not psychoactive, yet does still help with reducing inflammation and nausea, and shows promise as a cancer and neurological protector. Using this traditional brewing method means you’re left with a warm, comforting cup of tea that you can drink without any concern for the ‘high’ associated with THC.
We encourage you to take a look at our DIY Edibles Wellness Forum for even more delicious cannabis tea recipes, or to share your own!
