Elderberry Tea for Flavor and Health

With our focus on building our immune systems this flu season, elderberry is an important tool. It can help prevent getting the flu or perhaps can help reduce our symptoms. In our own area we can actually harvest wild elderberries and make syrup that we freeze for the winter. It is that syrup we use in this tea. You can make your own syrup with dried berries and you can make your own tea with the berries themselves. (This is a good online source for dried elderberries — a partner of this website.)

Read more from us on elderberries.

Elderberry screams for spice and these basic mulling spices give it just the zip it needs to make a pleasant tea.

Elderberry Tea Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 2 tablespoons elderberry syrup or one heaping tablespoon of dried berries (or to taste)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 cardamom pods
• 2 whole cloves
• Honey (optional, to taste)

Elderberry Tea Steps

1. Place all ingredients except for honey in a sauce pan.
2. Bring mixture to simmer and allow to simmer for at least 30 minutes.
3. Strain through strainer into tea cup.
4. Sweeten with honey or other sweetener if you wish. The syrup is slightly sweet already so this drink really doesn’t need much more sweetener.

I like to make this tea in the morning in triple batches or larger and drink it throughout the day. If you make larger batches you probably only need to double the mulling spices and just allow your tea to simmer a little longer for a full flavor.