A few years ago on this websites blog, I wrote articles about some herbal teas: Chamomile, Hibiscus, and Lavender. I had some good results with my tests and while I haven’t put these things up for sale on this site, I’ve been importing them little by little all this time. Now that I have a physical tea shop (Linvers Atelier Tea and Coffee) I felt I’ll need these herbs in larger amounts than I used to bring in. Since I have them anyway, might as well list them on this site. The rest of this article is a slightly amended copy and paste from those days gone by.

Unlike Chamomile — Lavender isn’t so problematic to brew well, even at its worst it’s still very drinkable. The aromas of lavender when heavily diluted remind me of latex paint and dust and the flavors of heavily diluted lavender taste like soapy water. To the opposite end when lavender is heavily concentrated the aroma is definitely perfumey, it’s similar to those ‘scent sticks’ which disperse essential oils fragrance in a room. The flavor of heavily concentrated lavender tea is gross but not unpalatable. Bitterness becomes the dominant trait and the lavender flavor has such a strength that I want to put into tomato pizza sauce, or on top of cinnamon buns. Nothing I’ve said so far sounds appealing, though fortunately with the help of this article and a scale you can avoid these disasters.

This particular lavender was sourced from extreme north-west China bordering Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia in the Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture of Xinjiang. They have a pretty huge lavender festival there, and they do grow quite an impressive amount of it.

For my 2019 test I brewed 6 pots of lavender tea using water from a boiler (hot tap water), steeping for 2 minutes, using 330ml of water per pot, with varying amounts of lavender flowers. 0.25g, 0.5g, 1g, 2g, 4g, and 8g.

0.25g:330ml produced a light spinach green color. A combination of paint, dust, and faint lavender create an overall chemical driven aroma while the flavor is very mild, borderline soapy but pleasant.

0.5g:330ml had a color of pale jade. The aroma was muted but did smell like lavender, slightly paint-y, dried nondescript flowers, and makes me think of things that are sweet. The mouthfeel is bolder than 0.25, the richness is nice. The actual flavor is still watery but not unpleasant.

1g:330ml was jade green in color. Aromas were unmistakably lavender, and beyond that the sweet aromas of 0.5 crossed a threshold into familiarity — rockets candy or Japanese ramune candy (pretty much the same thing, flavored powdery sugar), in a slightly less appealing way I would describe the aroma as being at the dentist. The richness of the flavor is about the same as 0.5g but at 1g it finally has a noticeable finish.

2g:330ml has a very appealing aqua blue color. The aroma is perfumey and reminds me a lot of the blue whales gummy candy I ate as a kid. The aroma is very satisfying in power and it presents itself in a way which is neither paint-y nor soapy but sweet and confected. The mouthfeel is heavier than 1g, texturally similar to 2% milk, it’s oily and rich. Very perfumey finish but now it is starting to give off slightly sour flavors.

4g:330ml has a color you would find in a box of pencil crayons as Sea Blue. The aroma is intense and candied, still very much lavender. It has kept the blue whale gummy quality but is starting to pull away from it towards… cherry? As if there was a cherry counterpart to blue raspberry, the kind of flavor you would find added to a soft serve ice cream. Red licorice and paint. Unfortunatey its aromatic to the point where most food isn’t aromatic like this so it’s giving me other ideas. Smells like the mens urinal mats when they have the cherry aroma. Nice. The flavor is a little bitter now, I’d say its unpleasant. The bitterness lingers.

8g:330ml was a very interesting color. The color only exists in german? Eichengrau. It’s the color that you see when you close your eyes, not black — very dark gray. The aroma is very concentrated, still sweet — still lavender — but more like perfume. Someone would spray this in their house. The flavor is gross… Not as unpalatable as I was expecting though. Bitterness is dominant and it’s certainly not an ideal flavor.

I think it’s most appropriate to steep Lavender at a ratio between 1:165 and 1:330, and to be more specific I think 1:194 is ideal. What I want out of lavender is the blue whale gummy aroma, a nice aqua blue color, and no sour or bitter notes. Using a ratio so diluted only needs 1.7g of lavender for the amount of water I use in a pot, so a little goes a long way. I’ve found many great uses for Lavender — if not to drink as tea, then to freeze that concentration to be used as ice cubes. It makes a lot of cold drinks especially refreshing!

Note: Lavender is quite cheap. This isn’t a low grade or anything like that. If you’re paying more than this, red flags!