How to Make Cannabis Tea That Actually Works

Here is the most common cannabis tea story we hear at the counter: someone steeped good flower in hot water like a regular tea bag, drank it, felt nothing, and concluded tea doesn’t work. The tea was fine. The chemistry was missing.

Why plain steeping fails

THC and CBD are fat-soluble. Hot water on its own extracts almost none of either, no matter how long you steep. A working cannabis tea needs two things the failed version skipped:

1. Decarbed flower. Raw cannabis holds THCA, which only becomes THC when heated. Bake your flower at 110°C for 30 to 40 minutes first.
2. A fat for the cannabinoids to bind to. A teaspoon of coconut oil, butter, or a pour of whole milk. This is the entire trick.

Get those two right and tea becomes one of the nicest ways to take cannabis: easy on the lungs, easy to portion, and well suited to a Toronto winter evening.

The recipe

What you need:

• 0.5 to 1 g of decarbed flower
• 1 tsp coconut oil or butter
• 2 cups of water
• a bag of whatever tea you actually like (chamomile and chai both work well here)
• honey, if that’s your thing

Method:

1. Bring the water and fat to a gentle simmer in a small saucepan.
2. Add the decarbed flower and let it simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Drop in the tea bag for the last 5 minutes.
4. Strain through a fine mesh strainer or coffee filter into your mug.
5. Sweeten and sit down somewhere comfortable.

Treat it like an edible, because it is one

The cannabinoids enter through your digestive system, so the timing is edible timing: onset in 45 to 90 minutes, effects lasting 4 to 6 hours. The classic mistake is deciding at the 40-minute mark that it didn’t work and brewing a second cup. Both cups then arrive at once.

If this is your first infused drink, pour half a cup, wait 90 minutes, and see where you are. Our New to Cannabis guide has a fuller dosing walkthrough.

Variations worth trying

Ginger and lemon turn it into a proper cold-weather drink. A CBD-dominant strain makes a low-impairment evening cup. And the strained tea cold-brews surprisingly well overnight for summer.

Label anything infused that goes in your fridge, and keep it away from kids and pets. If you’d rather skip the saucepan entirely, both our Toronto locations stock ready-made cannabis beverages with the dose printed on the can.