Tisane experiments; papaya leaf, and ginger with herbs and fruit

Kind of odd for a tea blog to keep going on about tisanes but some recent experiments were interesting.  The idea isn"t to point towards a certain "herb tea" someone might want to replicate as much as describe that experimentation, which others may find of interest, or could take further in their own directions.

visiting tea friend on a Bangkok ferry

On the subject of tea (real tea) I did just visit a new local friend, and another friend visiting Bangkok I"d met before, and tried a nice Oriental Beauty that he picked up in Taiwan recently on a visit, and some darker roasted Tie Kuan Yin from there.  But somehow it didn"t seem to fit as context for a blog post, as well to only include as mention that I really am still drinking teas, and I"ll get back to those sorts of write-ups.

Papaya leaf "tea"

Somehow it seems unlikely most readers would take this in the direction I did, cutting off a leaf in the yard and testing out drying it.  I"ve ran across health claims related to papaya leaf tisane in the past, that it would cure cancer, which of course hardly seems worth considering, unless one has cancer, and then who knows, drinking it couldn"t hurt.  If it does actually help with cancer that"s an anomaly, given how such claims seems to go, random ideas that get repeated.

at the house, from 2013; took awhile to get to this

I wasn"t trying to improve my health, more just curious what it would taste like, and how "processing" would go.  I"d expect it to be a bit bitter, although there is always the possibility of adjusting that with oxidation or roasting steps (or trying to; more messing around).  The version I made was as simple as could be; I picked a papaya leaf in the yard, a medium sized one, cut it to small pieces, and dried in on low heat in an oven for just over a half hour.


I was surprised that the "tea" was actually good (seems too strange to say "tisane" or "infusion," and awkward to avoid nouns).  The first impression was that it tasted a lot like pumpkin, at first like raw pumpkin, with a slightly roasted flavor that also resembled the pumpkin seeds taste.  I had expected it to be bitter but there was only a trace of that, a little like the taste of a dandelion leaf.

papaya leaf, fresh off the tree

The second time I tried it I re-roasted the tea to test the effect, stirring it in a slightly hot steel wok for a few minutes, careful not to singe the leaves too much.  I couldn"t bring myself to actually brown the leaves out of fear of ruining it, although the color changed a little, and it would be possible to go that far with such a step.


The taste change after brewing it was amazing; it tasted almost exactly like roasted tomatoes.  Anyone that cans tomatoes would be familiar with that, or it"s a great way to start on making a fresh tomato sauce.  After a few light infusions the taste shifted a bit back towards the earlier, non-roasted version, more like pumpkin.


For another experiment I might try oxidizing the tea (not that I actually know how), trying out crushing the leaves a bit and allowing more air contact before a heating step, and maybe adjusting roasting.  There is a good bit of papaya growing in the yard so I can keep borrowing leaves for the experiments, and this is the one way to know if something is really organic, to live with the plant.  In researching the health benefits (the next point) I ran across this how-to guide for drying papaya leaves for "tea," and it said just to hang them in a dark place, for weeks, and to let them dry like that.  Sounds a bit odd, really, although maybe related to the curing process for tobacco, which I"m also not familiar with.

oven drying chopped papaya leaf

I might mention a little about health benefits, while I"m at it.  A dedicated website lists out lots: cancer prevention, good for skin health and digestion, anti-parasitic, and it"s a diuretic that support detox (somehow would sound better if they"d skipped that last part).  The Livestrong organization supported the anti-cancer claim, and mentioned an actual study related to it (although it"s common for people skeptical of such claims to pick out flaws in study parameters or linkages).

Ginger with herbs and fruit

Due to having a cold I tried making a home-made ginger tea.  I can"t say online claims suggest that"s a good idea, that it works as a remedy, but somehow it made sense to me.  I should look up what is supposed to help since I"m getting colds too often lately.  I just read an article on the health effects of herbs ("The Healing Properties of Spices," really) and per that cardamom is supposed to help with colds, based on running down the standard claims related to masala chai spices.  I did add cardamom, just probably not enough to make a difference.

This seems a good place to mention that I don"t put a lot of faith in the standard health claims for teas or herbs or spices but I don"t disbelieve them either.  I"ve done some research for some tisanes in past posts and good references on health claims is hard to turn up, but trustworthy nutritional content references that suggest there is measurable nutritional value that would possibly help in some isn"t so hard to find.

same general approach as recent masala chai trials

Related to just consuming ginger, when I was younger we would "juice" it, mix it with other vegetables ran through a juicer.  It"s quite spicy but it doesn"t take much milder vegetable base to offset some flavor, and probably best with a bit of apple to cut it further.  Dosage might refer back to what online research says is good for a cold, or how much ginger to use if that supposedly is, but we never added much.

Lately I"ve been making masala chai and experimenting with a Christmas blend (without any ginger), so messing around with tisanes is sort of a continuation of that instead.  I initially prepared this version to be like a tea-free masala chai:  

-ginger:  1 1/2" of one substantial root, very thinly sliced

-cinnamon:  a good bit of one stick, freshly hand ground

-clove:  spice powder (I didn"t have cloves handy in whole form)

-cardamom:  spice powder (I do have cardamom pods on hand but that takes more messing around)

-mulberry leaf:  sort of a base used to replace tea

-rosemary:  dried spice version needles, just a bit to round out flavor

-salt:  just a dash

It occurred to me when tasting this that making a real tea-free masala chai would be tricky, and would require more working through that base flavor and structure.  It"s hard to imagine how to really replace tea but I think cocoa could work to cover some part of that range (but then it wouldn"t be caffeine free, although I would expect that the caffeine in cocoa is pretty limited).

After trying it the tea still needed something, so I added half an apple, ground with a hand grater.  I don"t know if the resulting blend actually helped my cold but it was nice, interesting.  I didn"t boil this version, though, just brewed it a lot of times to make quite a number of cups of "tea."

Making a masala chai last time I noticed an unusual thickness to that tea.  It wasn"t a thick, full feel as some high-mountain oolongs have--or other tea types, in varying degrees and expressed differently--but a really substantial viscosity change.  This tea had that too.  Any ideas which ingredient was doing it?  I could imagine someone finding thick tisane / herb tea disgusting but it was just interesting to me.  But then I live in Asia, where one really can"t be too squeamish about odd textures, or even about random smells encountered walking the streets.  I"m not into squishy textures enough to love most types of dim sum but I really do enjoy the Chinese desert of mixed beans, jellies, palm seeds, and lotus root over ice.

Both tisanes and versions of black teas are also native here but in the popular form Thais drink tisanes as single ingredient types, mixed with lots of sugar, prepared in jars and sold over ice in a separate part of food courts.  That blend I just described wouldn"t ring a bell, and I"ve never heard of anyone here making a tea out of papaya leaf.

Tisane experiments; papaya leaf, and ginger with herbs and fruit

Kind of odd for a tea blog to keep going on about tisanes but some recent experiments were interesting.  The idea isn"t to point towards a certain "herb tea" someone might want to replicate as much as describe that experimentation, which others may find of interest, or could take further in their own directions.

visiting tea friend on a Bangkok ferry

On the subject of tea (real tea) I did just visit a new local friend, and another friend visiting Bangkok I"d met before, and tried a nice Oriental Beauty that he picked up in Taiwan recently on a visit, and some darker roasted Tie Kuan Yin from there.  But somehow it didn"t seem to fit as context for a blog post, as well to only include as mention that I really am still drinking teas, and I"ll get back to those sorts of write-ups.

Papaya leaf "tea"

Somehow it seems unlikely most readers would take this in the direction I did, cutting off a leaf in the yard and testing out drying it.  I"ve ran across health claims related to papaya leaf tisane in the past, that it would cure cancer, which of course hardly seems worth considering, unless one has cancer, and then who knows, drinking it couldn"t hurt.  If it does actually help with cancer that"s an anomaly, given how such claims seems to go, random ideas that get repeated.

at the house, from 2013; took awhile to get to this

I wasn"t trying to improve my health, more just curious what it would taste like, and how "processing" would go.  I"d expect it to be a bit bitter, although there is always the possibility of adjusting that with oxidation or roasting steps (or trying to; more messing around).  The version I made was as simple as could be; I picked a papaya leaf in the yard, a medium sized one, cut it to small pieces, and dried in on low heat in an oven for just over a half hour.


I was surprised that the "tea" was actually good (seems too strange to say "tisane" or "infusion," and awkward to avoid nouns).  The first impression was that it tasted a lot like pumpkin, at first like raw pumpkin, with a slightly roasted flavor that also resembled the pumpkin seeds taste.  I had expected it to be bitter but there was only a trace of that, a little like the taste of a dandelion leaf.

papaya leaf, fresh off the tree

The second time I tried it I re-roasted the tea to test the effect, stirring it in a slightly hot steel wok for a few minutes, careful not to singe the leaves too much.  I couldn"t bring myself to actually brown the leaves out of fear of ruining it, although the color changed a little, and it would be possible to go that far with such a step.


The taste change after brewing it was amazing; it tasted almost exactly like roasted tomatoes.  Anyone that cans tomatoes would be familiar with that, or it"s a great way to start on making a fresh tomato sauce.  After a few light infusions the taste shifted a bit back towards the earlier, non-roasted version, more like pumpkin.


For another experiment I might try oxidizing the tea (not that I actually know how), trying out crushing the leaves a bit and allowing more air contact before a heating step, and maybe adjusting roasting.  There is a good bit of papaya growing in the yard so I can keep borrowing leaves for the experiments, and this is the one way to know if something is really organic, to live with the plant.  In researching the health benefits (the next point) I ran across this how-to guide for drying papaya leaves for "tea," and it said just to hang them in a dark place, for weeks, and to let them dry like that.  Sounds a bit odd, really, although maybe related to the curing process for tobacco, which I"m also not familiar with.

oven drying chopped papaya leaf

I might mention a little about health benefits, while I"m at it.  A dedicated website lists out lots: cancer prevention, good for skin health and digestion, anti-parasitic, and it"s a diuretic that support detox (somehow would sound better if they"d skipped that last part).  The Livestrong organization supported the anti-cancer claim, and mentioned an actual study related to it (although it"s common for people skeptical of such claims to pick out flaws in study parameters or linkages).

Ginger with herbs and fruit

Due to having a cold I tried making a home-made ginger tea.  I can"t say online claims suggest that"s a good idea, that it works as a remedy, but somehow it made sense to me.  I should look up what is supposed to help since I"m getting colds too often lately.  I just read an article on the health effects of herbs ("The Healing Properties of Spices," really) and per that cardamom is supposed to help with colds, based on running down the standard claims related to masala chai spices.  I did add cardamom, just probably not enough to make a difference.

This seems a good place to mention that I don"t put a lot of faith in the standard health claims for teas or herbs or spices but I don"t disbelieve them either.  I"ve done some research for some tisanes in past posts and good references on health claims is hard to turn up, but trustworthy nutritional content references that suggest there is measurable nutritional value that would possibly help in some isn"t so hard to find.

same general approach as recent masala chai trials

Related to just consuming ginger, when I was younger we would "juice" it, mix it with other vegetables ran through a juicer.  It"s quite spicy but it doesn"t take much milder vegetable base to offset some flavor, and probably best with a bit of apple to cut it further.  Dosage might refer back to what online research says is good for a cold, or how much ginger to use if that supposedly is, but we never added much.

Lately I"ve been making masala chai and experimenting with a Christmas blend (without any ginger), so messing around with tisanes is sort of a continuation of that instead.  I initially prepared this version to be like a tea-free masala chai:  

-ginger:  1 1/2" of one substantial root, very thinly sliced

-cinnamon:  a good bit of one stick, freshly hand ground

-clove:  spice powder (I didn"t have cloves handy in whole form)

-cardamom:  spice powder (I do have cardamom pods on hand but that takes more messing around)

-mulberry leaf:  sort of a base used to replace tea

-rosemary:  dried spice version needles, just a bit to round out flavor

-salt:  just a dash

It occurred to me when tasting this that making a real tea-free masala chai would be tricky, and would require more working through that base flavor and structure.  It"s hard to imagine how to really replace tea but I think cocoa could work to cover some part of that range (but then it wouldn"t be caffeine free, although I would expect that the caffeine in cocoa is pretty limited).

After trying it the tea still needed something, so I added half an apple, ground with a hand grater.  I don"t know if the resulting blend actually helped my cold but it was nice, interesting.  I didn"t boil this version, though, just brewed it a lot of times to make quite a number of cups of "tea."

Making a masala chai last time I noticed an unusual thickness to that tea.  It wasn"t a thick, full feel as some high-mountain oolongs have--or other tea types, in varying degrees and expressed differently--but a really substantial viscosity change.  This tea had that too.  Any ideas which ingredient was doing it?  I could imagine someone finding thick tisane / herb tea disgusting but it was just interesting to me.  But then I live in Asia, where one really can"t be too squeamish about odd textures, or even about random smells encountered walking the streets.  I"m not into squishy textures enough to love most types of dim sum but I really do enjoy the Chinese desert of mixed beans, jellies, palm seeds, and lotus root over ice.

Both tisanes and versions of black teas are also native here but in the popular form Thais drink tisanes as single ingredient types, mixed with lots of sugar, prepared in jars and sold over ice in a separate part of food courts.  That blend I just described wouldn"t ring a bell, and I"ve never heard of anyone here making a tea out of papaya leaf.

Tisane experiments; papaya leaf, and ginger with herbs and fruit

Kind of odd for a tea blog to keep going on about tisanes but some recent experiments were interesting.  The idea isn"t to point towards a certain "herb tea" someone might want to replicate as much as describe that experimentation, which others may find of interest, or could take further in their own directions.

visiting tea friend on a Bangkok ferry

On the subject of tea (real tea) I did just visit a new local friend, and another friend visiting Bangkok I"d met before, and tried a nice Oriental Beauty that he picked up in Taiwan recently on a visit, and some darker roasted Tie Kuan Yin from there.  But somehow it didn"t seem to fit as context for a blog post, as well to only include as mention that I really am still drinking teas, and I"ll get back to those sorts of write-ups.

Papaya leaf "tea"

Somehow it seems unlikely most readers would take this in the direction I did, cutting off a leaf in the yard and testing out drying it.  I"ve ran across health claims related to papaya leaf tisane in the past, that it would cure cancer, which of course hardly seems worth considering, unless one has cancer, and then who knows, drinking it couldn"t hurt.  If it does actually help with cancer that"s an anomaly, given how such claims seems to go, random ideas that get repeated.

at the house, from 2013; took awhile to get to this

I wasn"t trying to improve my health, more just curious what it would taste like, and how "processing" would go.  I"d expect it to be a bit bitter, although there is always the possibility of adjusting that with oxidation or roasting steps (or trying to; more messing around).  The version I made was as simple as could be; I picked a papaya leaf in the yard, a medium sized one, cut it to small pieces, and dried in on low heat in an oven for just over a half hour.


I was surprised that the "tea" was actually good (seems too strange to say "tisane" or "infusion," and awkward to avoid nouns).  The first impression was that it tasted a lot like pumpkin, at first like raw pumpkin, with a slightly roasted flavor that also resembled the pumpkin seeds taste.  I had expected it to be bitter but there was only a trace of that, a little like the taste of a dandelion leaf.

papaya leaf, fresh off the tree

The second time I tried it I re-roasted the tea to test the effect, stirring it in a slightly hot steel wok for a few minutes, careful not to singe the leaves too much.  I couldn"t bring myself to actually brown the leaves out of fear of ruining it, although the color changed a little, and it would be possible to go that far with such a step.


The taste change after brewing it was amazing; it tasted almost exactly like roasted tomatoes.  Anyone that cans tomatoes would be familiar with that, or it"s a great way to start on making a fresh tomato sauce.  After a few light infusions the taste shifted a bit back towards the earlier, non-roasted version, more like pumpkin.


For another experiment I might try oxidizing the tea (not that I actually know how), trying out crushing the leaves a bit and allowing more air contact before a heating step, and maybe adjusting roasting.  There is a good bit of papaya growing in the yard so I can keep borrowing leaves for the experiments, and this is the one way to know if something is really organic, to live with the plant.  In researching the health benefits (the next point) I ran across this how-to guide for drying papaya leaves for "tea," and it said just to hang them in a dark place, for weeks, and to let them dry like that.  Sounds a bit odd, really, although maybe related to the curing process for tobacco, which I"m also not familiar with.

oven drying chopped papaya leaf

I might mention a little about health benefits, while I"m at it.  A dedicated website lists out lots: cancer prevention, good for skin health and digestion, anti-parasitic, and it"s a diuretic that support detox (somehow would sound better if they"d skipped that last part).  The Livestrong organization supported the anti-cancer claim, and mentioned an actual study related to it (although it"s common for people skeptical of such claims to pick out flaws in study parameters or linkages).

Ginger with herbs and fruit

Due to having a cold I tried making a home-made ginger tea.  I can"t say online claims suggest that"s a good idea, that it works as a remedy, but somehow it made sense to me.  I should look up what is supposed to help since I"m getting colds too often lately.  I just read an article on the health effects of herbs ("The Healing Properties of Spices," really) and per that cardamom is supposed to help with colds, based on running down the standard claims related to masala chai spices.  I did add cardamom, just probably not enough to make a difference.

This seems a good place to mention that I don"t put a lot of faith in the standard health claims for teas or herbs or spices but I don"t disbelieve them either.  I"ve done some research for some tisanes in past posts and good references on health claims is hard to turn up, but trustworthy nutritional content references that suggest there is measurable nutritional value that would possibly help in some isn"t so hard to find.

same general approach as recent masala chai trials

Related to just consuming ginger, when I was younger we would "juice" it, mix it with other vegetables ran through a juicer.  It"s quite spicy but it doesn"t take much milder vegetable base to offset some flavor, and probably best with a bit of apple to cut it further.  Dosage might refer back to what online research says is good for a cold, or how much ginger to use if that supposedly is, but we never added much.

Lately I"ve been making masala chai and experimenting with a Christmas blend (without any ginger), so messing around with tisanes is sort of a continuation of that instead.  I initially prepared this version to be like a tea-free masala chai:  

-ginger:  1 1/2" of one substantial root, very thinly sliced

-cinnamon:  a good bit of one stick, freshly hand ground

-clove:  spice powder (I didn"t have cloves handy in whole form)

-cardamom:  spice powder (I do have cardamom pods on hand but that takes more messing around)

-mulberry leaf:  sort of a base used to replace tea

-rosemary:  dried spice version needles, just a bit to round out flavor

-salt:  just a dash

It occurred to me when tasting this that making a real tea-free masala chai would be tricky, and would require more working through that base flavor and structure.  It"s hard to imagine how to really replace tea but I think cocoa could work to cover some part of that range (but then it wouldn"t be caffeine free, although I would expect that the caffeine in cocoa is pretty limited).

After trying it the tea still needed something, so I added half an apple, ground with a hand grater.  I don"t know if the resulting blend actually helped my cold but it was nice, interesting.  I didn"t boil this version, though, just brewed it a lot of times to make quite a number of cups of "tea."

Making a masala chai last time I noticed an unusual thickness to that tea.  It wasn"t a thick, full feel as some high-mountain oolongs have--or other tea types, in varying degrees and expressed differently--but a really substantial viscosity change.  This tea had that too.  Any ideas which ingredient was doing it?  I could imagine someone finding thick tisane / herb tea disgusting but it was just interesting to me.  But then I live in Asia, where one really can"t be too squeamish about odd textures, or even about random smells encountered walking the streets.  I"m not into squishy textures enough to love most types of dim sum but I really do enjoy the Chinese desert of mixed beans, jellies, palm seeds, and lotus root over ice.

Both tisanes and versions of black teas are also native here but in the popular form Thais drink tisanes as single ingredient types, mixed with lots of sugar, prepared in jars and sold over ice in a separate part of food courts.  That blend I just described wouldn"t ring a bell, and I"ve never heard of anyone here making a tea out of papaya leaf.

Revisiting making masala chai (Indian style spiced tea)

I had some unfinished business with masala chai due to buying spices to make it in Indonesia last December.   I since used those to make a tea that was really a variation of on as a Christmas blend, borrowing some aspects for that version, but still wanted to try a more traditional take.  We had a cold weather spell during which masala chai would have made more sense here a week ago--down to the teens Celsius, low 60s Farenheit, not all that cold--but I missed it, so I made masala chai when it wasn"t "cold" here anyway.

The plan was to make a relatively traditional version, with ginger, cinnamon, clove, cardamom,  and vanilla.   Only the clove wasn"t a relatively fresh version, since I only had ground clove to work with.  Ginger is sort of the central spice, as I see it, and I used ginger from a fresh root, grated just prior to making the tea.  I added salt, really an optional element, but in the right limited proportion it makes a big difference.

I did add one extra ingredient, one non-standard variation, based on experience from that Christmas blend,  adding a little orange zest (fresh grated orange peel).  Since I wanted to keep the original flavor profile I only added a little, relative to the other spices.  Based on that earlier Christmas blend experimentation, it would also work well to thinly peel the outer orange skin layer and dry it (on low heat in an oven for half an hour, maybe) and use the dried version later as an ingredient.  Steps like drying change flavor profiles a little, so that could work even better, or maybe not quite as well, or it might be equivalent but different.

Ingredients

The cardamom was from pods, the cinnamon ground from a stick on a grater immediately before, and vanilla from bean pods.  Ordinarily that would make for an expensive tea but those didn"t cost so much in a Bali grocery store, at least if you don"t factor in airfare to get there.  For tea I used a commercial grade black tea from Indonesia and a better black tea from Vietnam, tea a bit too good for blending, but it"s what I had.


I"m no cardamom or spice expert but this was the input Wikipedia offers about types, and it seems clear enough it was "black cardamom:"

There are two main types of cardamom:

True or green cardamom (or, when bleached, white cardamom[10]) comes from the species Elettaria cardamomum and is distributed from India to Malaysia.

Black cardamom, also known as brown, greater, longer, or Nepal cardamom, comes from two species, Amomum costatum and Amomum subulatum, which are distributed mainly in Asia and Australia.

Production and tasting

tea and spices, a bit scary looking

I boiled it all for about 10 minutes, then strained out that tea to drink and re-steeped using fresh water twice to see what would be left, and the next two steeps were still plenty strong.  For whatever reason it made sense to me to boil the tea and spices some first then add the milk to boil some with milk included, but I don"t think it made much difference to do it that way versus just mixing it all.


The tea was nice, a bit thick.  At first it seemed the salt level was too much but after adjusting milk and sugar level to offset the tea and spice strength it was fine, just better the second time when it had washed out, but still ok initially.


The clove picked up a little the second infusion, and the vanilla was strongest the third.  I think the exceptional thickness and creaminess was coming directly from the vanilla, but really that thick feel to the tea was hard to place.  A lot of times reviews will say an ordinary tea has a full body or feel to it but nothing like this; it was close to the effect of eating custard, nothing like using a good bit of milk would cause.

tea boiling with milk added

It made too much tea to drink in one sitting (although I did consume an outrageous amount of it, maybe four 10-12 ounce mugs of very strong tea) so I chilled the last bit to try later in a cold-tea version.  It was nice cold, just really, really, thick.

Lessons learned

In a sense the general approach was to try making this tea in a way that resembled cooking, to use trial and error, to mix the blend by feel.  I had made masala chai a few times before, when I first wrote a post about different recipe and process research and variations, and again when an intern from Nepal gave me a commercial pre-mixed version to work with, so this is the third time to experiment with it in a year.


The spice balance was ok in this version; it worked out.  I didn"t really add enough cardamom to let that show through well but somehow it was more evident in the chilled version the next day.  In general the tea was probably too strong initially, but the nice thing about the tea type is you can dilute it with milk and add a little more sugar to compensate, even if the normal process is to just cook it in the final form, based on a recipe.  The varying forms of the spices made them stand out more in different infusions, since I prepared it that way, with ginger washing out first, and then clove picking up, as I"d noted.  There"s something about how fresh vanilla shifts things that really made the overall effect work out, a depth it adds that pulled all the rest together well.


It"s best to carefully limit the salt, and I didn"t get that perfectly right, but it would"ve been possible to mix the first and second "infusion," but not necessary since it wasn"t really that far off.  It was hard to really taste what the orange zest added since I kept that input level low to retain the normal general profile, but I think I liked it.


Related to tea dosage, it"s best to make it for more than one person, but there just isn"t anyone else in my household that will drink masala chai.  I think re-heating the tea later would work but I didn"t try that.  The tea I drank when I first made it added up to a lot of caffeine to be taking in at one go but I think I felt the spice effects more.  I"m reminded of visiting Indian food lunch buffets as an intern a long time ago, how we would feel the effects of those spices in the afternoon, and imagined that we must have smelled like those spices (but we probably really didn"t).  Living in Thailand I"ve acquired a tolerance for curries but it"s a different mix of ingredients in those.


As for what to change, cooking time is always an issue, an obvious place for experimentation.  I only gave the initial version a 10 minute simmer, which was why the tea and spices could make two weaker batches / infusions after.  Some recipes (mentioned in that first post I cited a link for) called for two stages of short boiling mixed with long steeps, and other online anecdotal input claimed one could boil the tea and spice and milk blend for a very long time to get the most out of it.


The final "strength" or concentration level is also a good opportunity for adjustment; diluted to 1/4th the strength I drank the first batch at would probably make more sense.  But I liked it strong, and subjective preference carries the decision making.  As for spicing variation I"ve added nutmeg before, but there was already plenty going on for this version as it was.