Cinnamon Tea: How to Brew It and What It May Do

A pot of cinnamon tea is one of the gentlest, most comforting things you can make, and it is the way people in Sri Lanka have enjoyed cinnamon for far longer than anyone has baked it into pastries. Customers often ask us what cinnamon tea is good for, so we want to answer that honestly: it is a lovely, warming drink with some interesting research behind it, and it is not a medicine.

This article is for general information only and is not medical advice. Cinnamon tea is a drink, not a treatment for any condition. If you are managing a health issue, are pregnant, or take medication, please talk to your doctor before making cinnamon a daily habit.

How to brew it properly

Good cinnamon tea is almost embarrassingly simple, but a couple of small things make the difference between a pale cup and a fragrant one.

You will need: 2 whole Ceylon cinnamon sticks, 250ml of water, and about ten minutes.

1. Bring the water to just off the boil, the point where the first bubbles rise.
2. Drop in the two whole sticks.
3. Cover the pot or cup and let it steep for eight to ten minutes. Covering matters, because it keeps the aromatic oils in your cup instead of drifting off as steam.
4. Strain and drink. A little honey is nice, but go easy so the cinnamon stays the star.

You can get a good second brew out of the same sticks. Leave them in, top up with hot water, and steep again. The second cup is softer but still lovely. We wrote more about the daily habit in our cinnamon tea ritual post.

Why Ceylon Cinnamon for a daily cup

If you are going to drink this every day, the type of cinnamon matters more than it does for occasional baking.

Cinnamon contains a natural compound called coumarin, and in large amounts it has been linked to liver problems in sensitive people, which is why food-safety bodies set a tolerable daily intake for it. The two main types of cinnamon differ a lot here. Cassia, the common supermarket type, can be high in coumarin, while true Ceylon cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) contains only trace amounts (Healthline, NCCIH). For a daily tea, that makes Ceylon cinnamon the sensible choice, and it is what we grow. We compare the two in Ceylon cinnamon vs cassia.

What cinnamon tea may do

Here is where we tread carefully, because this is exactly the area where the internet tends to overpromise.

Antioxidants. Cinnamon is rich in polyphenols, plant compounds that act as antioxidants, and it scores well on standard antioxidant measures compared with many other foods (Healthline). A cup of tea gives you a small, pleasant contribution to a varied diet, not a megadose. It is best thought of as one nice part of eating well, not something to lean on.

Blood sugar. This is the most studied and the most hyped claim, so it deserves the most caution. Some studies suggest cinnamon may have a modest effect on fasting blood sugar and insulin sensitivity, but the research is genuinely mixed, with trials differing in cinnamon type, dose and participants. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health puts it plainly: studies of cinnamon for blood sugar and diabetes have had inconsistent results, and the evidence does not support using it as a treatment (NCCIH). The independent analysis site Examine reaches a similarly cautious view, describing effects that look small and unreliable (Examine). It is also worth noting most of that research used cinnamon powder or extract at set doses, not a cup of tea, so we should be even more modest about what a brewed drink might do.

Warmth and comfort. We will happily claim this one. A warm, aromatic, lightly sweet drink with no caffeine is a genuinely nice thing to build into a morning or an evening, and the ritual of making it is part of the benefit.

So the honest summary is that cinnamon tea is a pleasant, antioxidant-containing drink that may have small effects on blood sugar in some people, and that is a long way from a treatment. If you have diabetes or take blood-sugar or blood-thinning medication, this is the kind of thing to raise with your doctor rather than self-manage, since supplements and medicines can interact.

A gentle, honest habit

We love cinnamon tea because it asks so little and gives back a calm, warm few minutes. Make it before you check your phone. Drink it plain the first few times so you learn a flavour most people have never actually tasted. If it happens to be doing your body a small favour on top of that, lovely, but the comfort alone is reason enough.

If you would like to try it, our Ceylon cinnamon sticks are grown and hand-rolled on our family estate in Sri Lanka, never fumigated, and naturally low in coumarin, which makes them well suited to a daily cup. A heavy tea drinker might prefer our bulk sticks, which last a serious daily drinker several months. Whichever you choose, every purchase helps the growers who tend the trees. Enjoy your pot.

---

Sources: NCCIH (US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health) · Healthline: Ceylon cinnamon vs cassia · Healthline: benefits of cinnamon · Examine: cinnamon