Professor Herb Instant Hemp Tea

What is actually in the bag

The declared ingredients, in order, are chamomile at 34 per cent, lemon balm at 30 per cent, lemon grass at 15 per cent, hemp seeds at 11 per cent, sallow-thorn berries at 5 per cent and orange oil flavouring at 5 per cent.

Read that again with the percentages in mind. Chamomile and lemon balm together make up nearly two thirds of the blend. Hemp is the fourth ingredient by weight and accounts for about a ninth of it. This is a chamomile tea with some hemp seed in it, which is a perfectly good thing to be, but it is not what the name on the box suggests.

Sallow-thorn is the older British name for sea buckthorn, a bright orange berry with a sharp, tart, faintly citrus character. At 5 per cent it is a small part of the blend but a noticeable one, and together with the orange oil it is what stops the whole thing tasting purely of chamomile.

The brand states that the tea contains no caffeine, no THC and no additives.

The hemp in it is seed, and seed has no cannabinoids

This is the part that matters most and the part nobody explains. Cannabinoids are produced in the resin glands on the flowers and leaves of the plant. They are not produced in the seed.

Hemp seed is a food ingredient in its own right, used for oil, flour and protein, and it carries essentially no CBD. Any trace found in seed is generally contamination picked up from the outside of the husk during harvesting rather than anything the seed made itself.

So a tea containing 11 per cent hemp seed is not a low-strength CBD tea. It is a herbal tea that includes a food ingredient derived from the hemp plant. There is no cannabinoid figure on this product because there is no cannabinoid content to state.

Some arithmetic makes the scale clear. The box states 30 grams across 20 servings, which works out at 1.5 grams in a bag. Hemp seed at 11 per cent of 1.5 grams is roughly 0.165 grams, so something in the region of a sixth of a gram of hemp seed goes into a cup. Nobody publishes that number and it is the clearest way to understand what you are buying.

Which is exactly why it sits outside the Novel Foods rules

Here is where the absence of CBD becomes genuinely useful rather than merely a caveat.

The Food Standards Agency regards hemp seed, hemp seed oil, ground hemp seed and partially defatted hemp seed as not novel, because a history of consumption in Europe before May 1997 has been accepted. Those ingredients can be used in food without a separate authorisation.

CBD is different. Its novel food status was confirmed in January 2019, and that covers CBD extracts, isolates and synthetics, plus any product they have been added to. A product only becomes novel when the CBD goes in, which is why plain hemp seed oil is fine and hemp seed oil with CBD added is not.

So this tea is on the straightforward side of that line. Every other ingestible hemp product we sell has to be considered against the CBD novel foods regime. This one does not, and the reason is precisely the thing the name obscures: there is no CBD in it.

That is a real advantage and we would rather explain it than let the pack imply something else. If you have been put off ingestible CBD by the regulatory uncertainty around it, this is a hemp product that simply does not raise the question.

It is not instant either

The word instant normally means a soluble powder you stir into water. This is not that.

The brand's own instruction is to put one bag into 250ml of boiling water, leave it to stand for ten minutes, then strain it and drink. Ten minutes is a long steep even by herbal tea standards, and straining is not something you do to an instant drink.

It is a conventional paper tea bag, and the artwork shows exactly that. Whatever instant was meant to convey here, it is not a description of how the product works.

We have now found the same thing three times across this brand. Its oil is sold as a tincture when it is an infused oil. Its briquettes are described as hemp biomass pollen, which names bulk plant material and concentrated resin at once. And this tea is called instant when it is steeped and strained. We are describing a consistent habit in how things get named rather than suggesting anyone set out to mislead, but three is enough to call it a pattern.

What it tastes like

Chamomile leads, as the percentages say it should: soft, faintly floral, with the slightly hay-like quality chamomile always has. Lemon balm sits underneath it and adds a gentle lemon note that is more herbal than citrus.

The lemon grass sharpens the edges and stops it going flat, and the sea buckthorn and orange oil lift the finish with a tartness that is the most distinctive thing in the cup. Without those two it would be a very familiar chamomile infusion.

The hemp seed contributes a light nuttiness rather than anything green or grassy. Hemp seed tastes closer to sunflower seed than to the plant, so anyone expecting the tea to taste of hemp in the way the brand's smokable products smell of it will find it much milder than that.

Ten minutes of steeping is deliberate and worth respecting, since chamomile and lemon balm both give up their flavour slowly. Pulled early it is thin.

Two notes on our own listing

The first is a correction to something on our side. Our product record describes this as a CBD drink containing CBD isolate. That is wrong, it is generated automatically from our supplier feed rather than written, and we have logged it for correction. There is no CBD isolate in this tea and no CBD of any kind. We would rather flag our own error on the page than leave it sitting in the data.

The second concerns quantity. The box itself states 30 grams and 20 servings. What we cannot confirm is how many boxes this listing supplies, because our supplier record is ambiguous on that point and the brand sells a multi-box version separately. We have not stated a number anywhere on this page for that reason, and it is being checked.

This product is sold to over-18s. It is not a food supplement, it is not a medicine, and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting it does anything.

Who should buy something else

If you want CBD, this is the wrong product and it is the main reason we have written this page the way we have. Our CBD drinks and oils are where to look instead.

If you dislike chamomile, there is no way around it here. It is a third of the blend and the dominant flavour.

If you want something quick, ten minutes of steeping is a long wait for a cup of tea and the name will have led you to expect otherwise.

If you want a hemp flavour, the seed gives a mild nuttiness rather than anything recognisably hempy, and the brand's Premium Hemp Blend is a different proposition entirely.

Over-18s only, and nothing here is a medical claim of any kind.