Instructions

1. Pick the mint, lemon balm and thyme before the plants flower. Once a herb puts its energy into flowers the leaves thin out, and tea made from them tastes of hay.
2. Hull and halve the strawberries, and nick the skin of any whole berry going in. An unbroken berry skin is a waterproof jacket, and the fruit under it will still be wet at the end of a long run.
3. Give each component its own tray. Leaves finish in a fraction of the time berries need, and sharing a tray means either scorched mint or damp fruit.
4. Dry at 57 °C for 13 hours, pulling trays as they come good rather than all at the end. The leaves come off first and the halved berries stay in longest.
5. A leaf is ready when it crushes to dust between finger and thumb. A berry is ready when it is hard at the centre and leaves no smear pressed against a plate — halve one to check, because the skin dries long before the flesh does.
6. Cool everything spread out before it goes anywhere near a jar. Anything jarred warm sweats onto the glass, and the mould that follows takes the whole blend with it.
7. Store the components in separate jars and mix a cup at a time. Berries carry more residual moisture than leaves, and kept apart the leaves hold their scent for a year rather than six months.
8. Brew a heaped spoon of the mix per cup for five to seven minutes. Dried fruit gives up its flavour far more slowly than leaf does, so a short steep tastes only of the mint.