How to Make Mint Tea from Fresh Mint Leaves

How to make mint tea with fresh mint from your garden! This is such a refreshing summer tea to make using all natural ingredients.

Every summer I make gallons of fresh mint tea. As soon as the mint starts blooming in spring, my youngest son begs me to make mint tea.

My mom was the one who introduced me to the wonderful experience of growing your own mint.

She encouraged me to grow my own, partially because it’s so easy to grow, and it’s virtually impossible to kill!

If you’re familiar with growing mint, you know that it grows and spreads like crazy pretty easily.

And then you have to decide what to do with all that mint!

I used to have my mint growing around a tree. But then I switched to this barrel planter.

I have three different types of mint in this planter—peppermint, chocolate mint, and I can’t remember what the third one was.

It works out really well because it stops the mint from spreading all over the place and getting out of hand.

But every summer we have plenty of mint to make lots of fresh mint tea!

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How to Make Mint Tea

Making your own mint tea from fresh leaves is easy and fun. It’s something my children have always loved to help with.

I think they like the idea that we’re making this from scratch from something we grew ourselves.

Here are the easy steps to making mint tea at home.

Supplies Needed to Make Mint Tea

• fresh mint
• measuring bowl or other large bowl
• fine mesh strainer
• gallon jar drink dispenser
• kettle (I use an electric kettle like this to boil water)

Step 1: Get a Handful of Mint

First, go out to your garden and cut off some sprigs of mint.

I don’t just use the leaves, I use the stem too. I just cut off the top part of the plant, and that way the mint will continue to replenish itself.

Somehow cutting it seems to make it grow even more!

For a gallon of mint tea, use a handful or two of mint, depending on how strong you want it.

Step 2: Rinse the Leaves

Rinse the leaves under running water to remove any bugs, spiders, or other debris.

I like to gently swish mine in a bowl of clean water first, then I rinse them under some running water.

Step 3: Crush the Leaves

Next, put the clean leaves in a bowl of water and squeeze and crush them with your clean hands. This releases the delicious scent of mint from the plants.

Continue massaging and crushing the leaves in the water until the water turns a brownish color. It will look like tea.

Strain the liquid through a fine mesh strainer or a cloth into a gallon jar or pitcher.

Step 4: Steep the Leaves

Next, I boil about 8 cups of water in my electric kettle (or use whatever you have to boil the water).

Pour the boiling water over the leaves left in the bowl.

Let the mint leaves steep in the water for about 10-15 minutes, until you see the water turning a light brown.

Step 5: Combine and Sweeten

After the water in the bowl has cooled a little bit (but still hot), pour through the fine mesh strainer into the gallon jar.

Combine with the rest of the mint tea and stir.

Add the sweetener of your choice and stir again.

Serve Your Tea Over Ice

Finally, after your tea has been sweetened, serve it over ice and enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed learning how to make mint tea from your garden! It’s one of our favorite summer drinks ever.

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Here are the supplies that were used in this post:

• fresh mint
• scissors (these black ones are my favorite!)
• measuring bowl or other large bowl
• fine mesh strainer
• gallon jar drink dispenser
• kettle (I use an electric kettle like this to boil water)

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