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POURCRAFT BAR

WARM

Honey Ginger Lemon Tea

Ten parts hot water to one part honey syrup and one part lemon, with the ginger steeped rather than boiled.

  • 10Hot water83%10 oz
  • 1Honey syrup8%1 oz
  • 1Lemon juice8%1 oz
Ice
None
Glass
A 12 oz mug or heatproof glass
Serves
1
Garnish
An expressed strip of lemon peel

Ingredients

Batch size

1 serving
  • 10 ozwater, just off the boil
  • 1 infresh ginger, sliced into thin coinsSwap: 1/2 tsp ground ginger, stirred in at the end — sharper and less rounded
  • 1 ozhoney syrupSwap: Honey straight from the jar, stirred until fully dissolved
  • 1 ozlemon juice, freshly squeezed
  • 1wide strip of lemon peel

Method

  1. Slice the ginger thin rather than grating it

    Thin coins give plenty of surface for a short steep and then lift out cleanly. Grated ginger releases fiber that ends up as a raft on the surface and grit in the last mouthful.

  2. Steep the ginger off the boil

    5 minutes, covered

    Water straight off the kettle, poured over the coins, covered. Boiling ginger for several minutes pushes it from warm and aromatic into something noticeably harsher.

  3. Lift the ginger out before anything else goes in

    Left in the cup it keeps extracting the whole time you are drinking, so the last third tastes quite different from the first. This is the step most people skip.

  4. Honey syrup first, then lemon

    Syrup dissolves instantly into hot water and lemon does not need to. Adding lemon last also keeps it away from the hottest phase, where its fresh character disappears fastest.

  5. Express the peel over the surface

    One squeeze of a wide strip of lemon skin over the top. It is the difference between a cup that smells of hot water and one that smells of lemon before it reaches your mouth.

The one thing that ruins it

Leaving the ginger coins in the mug while you drink it. What tasted balanced at the first sip is aggressively hot at the last, and by then there is no way to correct it.

Tools you actually need

If you need one

01Cleanest cut
Microplane Premium Classic Zester & Grater

Microplane

Microplane Premium Classic Zester & Grater

An 18/8 stainless blade with a soft handle, the reference tool for this job. A sharp photo-etched blade cuts the colored layer and stops, which is exactly the behavior the category exists for: oil without pith.

Best for
Fine zest over the surface of a finished drink
Key spec
18/8 stainless steel blade, soft handle, citrus and hard cheese
  • Sharp enough to take the colored layer without pressing into the pith
  • 18/8 stainless resists the staining that citrus acid causes
  • Soft handle gives control at the shallow angle this job needs
  • Equally at home on hard cheese, so it earns its drawer space
  • No blade cover listed, so it needs careful storage
  • A fine zester cannot take the wide strips that expressing calls for
  • One blade profile only, unlike a multi-piece set
View on Amazon

Technique behind this drink

Make it ahead, or batch it

Honey syrup keeps for weeks refrigerated and ginger coins can be cut a day ahead and kept covered. Squeezed lemon juice should be same-day; the difference between fresh juice and juice squeezed yesterday is very obvious in a drink this simple. Refer to the cold-storage chart linked from the syrup ratios page for holding the syrup.

Steep time is what changes when you scale this, and it changes in the wrong direction. A larger volume of water holds heat far longer, so the same five-minute steep in a teapot extracts considerably more from the ginger than it does in a single mug — the result is sharp and slightly soapy. Cut the steep to about three and a half minutes for a full pot, and pull the ginger out even if it looks like it has barely started. Honey syrup scales exactly. Lemon does not: add it to the pot at the last possible moment, or better, add it to each cup, because lemon juice sitting in hot water loses its brightness within about ten minutes and there is nothing else in this drink to hide behind.