Update on how to make cassina tea that is actually enjoyable to drink

Toaster oven-parched cassina leaves

Having experimented with following historical accounts of how to make the true "black drink" of the Southeastern Indians (as documented in my previous 2014 blog posts here), and having served it to many students and colleagues over the years, I finally decided to take the advice of a few of my local friends who actually drink cassina tea on a regular basis, and approach it more like "ordinary" tea brewing.  As usual, I picked a few terminal branches of yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) with abundant leaves while on a hike, left them drying for a few days, then easily scraped/plucked the dried leaves off and rinsed them in a colander. 

Parched leaves ready for grinding.

Here's where it got different: after patting the leaves a bit with a paper towel, I spread them on a toaster oven baking sheet, and put them in the toaster oven on low heat (180 degrees) for about 20 minutes, with the kitchen oven fan on to keep the fragrant odor from accumulating in the kitchen (I personally like the smell, but not everyone does, and it's very persistent).  

Having found that it wasn't really browning yet, I turned the heat up to 350 degrees, and watched it closely until about 5 minutes later, all the leaves were nicely parched to a medium brown.  Once removed, I put the leaves in a little handmade clay bowl (just for effect) and ground them up a bit with a wooden pestle.  From there, I simply put about 1 teaspoon of the ground leaves in a tea strainer in a teacup and poured boiling water over it, leaving it steeping for 6-8 minutes.

Ground cassina leaves

After removing the strainer, I poured the tea through a fine kitchen strainer into a pyrex dish, where you can see that it turned into a golden brown color.  As is my normal practice, I then stirred a spoonful of honey in it and let it cool a few minutes.  The result was excellent, nicely flavored and without the persistent bitter aftertaste that I always found after boiling the leaves for a long time in my previous experiments.  And now all I have to do is keep up my stock of dried leaves for parching and grinding, and I can enjoy a delicious cup of cassina tea anytime I want.  It's not just for show-and-tell anymore!

Oven-parched cassina tea after 6-8 minutes steeping in hot water

Updated recipe from best cassina brew I've made yet

Yesterday when preparing a pot of the Black Drink for students in my Southeastern Indians class, I used a ziploc bag full of previously-parched, whole cassina leaves (Ilex vomitoria), which I had put away several weeks back after picking out the black (burned) leaves.  Dumping the entire quantity (perhaps 1/2 cup or a little more) into a pot with 4 cups of water, I let the leaves boil on just-below-high heat for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally to free the leaves from clumping up on the sides.

When I poured the product through a strainer into a bowl, the color was very dark brown, like strong coffee.  Poured into a large thermos bottle, the tea kept piping hot for at least 10 hours or so, and was definitely the best I've ever brewed, with none of the bitter aftertaste I've come to expect from the Black Drink.  I'm not sure whether it was sorting out all the most burned leaves after parching, or letting it sit for many weeks in a ziploc bag before boiling it, but the concoction was just about perfect in my opinion (and a few students came back for more).  Perhaps some of the oils had time to evaporate or dry up, just enough to ameliorate the strong edge in flavor.

Here's the current recipe in short form:

How to Brew Cassina Tea, a.k.a. the Black Drink
1. Gather several small outer branches from live Yaupon Holly shrubs (Ilex vomitoria), setting them on a tray to dry for about a week.
2. Gather all dried leaves, separating leaves still attached to the stems and removing all stem bits.
3. Rinse leaves in a strainer, and set on a towel or paper towel to dry.
4. Parch leaves in a cast iron skillet over medium heat (the oven fan is very useful here), stirring constantly and keeping the leaves in motion to keep the lower leaves from browning too much.  The pan will smoke during this process
5. When the leaves have turned more brown than green (and before the leaves char), remove from skillet into a tray to cool.
6. Separate the blackest leaves and discard; bag the rest of the leaves in ziploc bags for later use (a month or more seems to produce the best results).
7. To brew a pot of cassina, take 1/2 cup (or slightly more) of the previously-parched leaves, place them in a saucepan with 4 cups of cold water, and heat on medium-high heat until boiling.  Let boil for 45 minutes or more, until liquid turns dark brown, stirring to keep the leaves from clumping or sticking to the sides.  Add water as needed to maintain the liquid volume at 4 cups.
8. Remove pan from heat and pour hot tea through a strainer into a metal bowl.
9. Add 4 Tbsp. sugar (more or less to taste) for the 4 cups of tea, stir, and serve immediately or place in thermos to serve later or transport.

Refinements to the Black Drink Recipe

As an update to my last blog entry, I tried a couple of modifications to the recipe in the last post in order to see if I could make a smoother tea without as much of an aftertaste, and also in order to clarify quantities and measurements.

Based on the success of my last experiment, which I have concluded actually used about 1/3 cup for about 2 1/2 cups of water, I settled on a larger quantity (since the process takes time, so I might as well make a larger batch) of both leaves and water.  Using dried, unbroken leaves, I measured out exactly 1 cup of leaves which would eventually be boiled in 2 quarts (8 cups) of water.  This ratio (1:8 leaves to water volume) produced excellent results.

The next step was to parch the leaves as before in a cast iron skillet. My first major adjustment was to parch the leaves on a lower heat (around 7 or 8 in a scale of 10), keep them even more constantly in motion by stirring, and pull them off the heat before they got too blackened.  I found that this was very straightforward to do, allowing the leaves to parch until about half of them had turned mostly brown (not black), with the rest still in the process of turning from green to brown (as pictured below).

Next, following the historic accounts in the previous blog post, I crushed these parched leaves up into small bits by hand in a large bowl before putting them in the water to boil.  This reduced the volume to about 1/3 cup of crushed leaves (from 1 cup of uncrushed leaves).

Crushing up the leaves also seems to have been pivotal in exposing more of the leaves to the boiling water, which produced a somewhat different result than was the case last time when I boiled the uncrushed leaves directly. Below are the crushed leaves beginning to boil.

After the crushed leaves soaked up the water and sank, the concoction initially looked the same as last time, basically a black-brown boiling tea.

I let this mixture boil for a total of about 1 hour and 15 minutes, but when I added fresh (though hot) water to the tea after about an hour, a light frothy foam developed on top, which persisted even after the tea came to a boil again, and right to the end.  Below is the initial foam.

And below is the later stage.

Once the tea was removed from the heat, I poured it through a fine sieve into a large bowl in order to catch the tiny bits of crushed leaves that hadn't already sunk to the bottom.

Finally, when I ladled some of the tea into the same white cup as before, it seems to have obtained nearly the same degree of darkness as when I parched the leaves much longer (and blacker), showing that the leaves need not be charred to produce a cassina tea that can effectively be called the "black drink."

Moreover, the taste seemed even richer (maybe the foam has something to do with this?), and virtually all the aftertaste was gone (though very mild bitterness still remains in the bottom of the cup, not dissimilar from some of the stronger regular teas).  I added simple cane sugar instead of honey this time, and it was more than excellent as a fine, aromatic tea.  It's definitely on par with commercial teas, in my opinion, and pretty easy to make once you've got the routine down.  When the weather warms up, I'm going to see how well it does as iced tea...this is a Southern drink, after all!

Brewing the "Black Drink"

The well-known Southeastern Indian ritual beverage commonly known as the "Black Drink" or cassina, was brewed from the yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria), native to much of the Southeastern Coastal Plain, and (as I've noticed on my local hikes) super-abundant in the Pensacola area.  While I've tried the weak tea commonly brewed as a reproduction of the Black Drink, which contains a comparatively mild dose of caffeine (according to recent studies comparing it to commercial tea and coffee), I've always been intrigued to try the "real stuff" described in a wide range of historic documents, and which has the unfortunate association with ritual vomiting (hence the scientific name), though this is apparently incidental to the tea itself.  Since the yaupon holly is so easily obtained in the Pensacola area, I decided to give it a try using traditional techniques but somewhat more modern implements.

A few documentary quotes referring to preparation techniques are appropriate to insert here:

Jonathan Dickinson, 1699 (at the village of Ais [Jece]): “In one part of his house, where the fire was kept, was an Indian man, having a pot on the fire, wherein he was making a drink of the leaves of a shrub, (which we understood afterwards by the Spaniard, is called casseena) boiling the said leaves, after they had parched them in a pot; then with a gourd, having a long neck, and at the top of it a small hole, which the top of one’s finger could cover, and at the side of it a round hole of two inches diameter; they take the liquor out of the pot, and put it into a deep round bowl, which being almost filled, containeth nigh three gallons; with this gourd they brew the liquor, and make it froth very much; it looketh of a deep brown colour.  In the brewing of this liquor was this noise made, which we thought strange; for the pressing of the gourd gently down into the liquor, and the air which it contained, being forced out of the little hole at the top, occasioned a sound, and according to the time and motion given, would be various.  This drink when made and cool to sup, was in a shell first carried to the cassekey, who threw part of it on the ground, and the rest he drank up, and then would make a loud Hem; and afterwards the cup passed to the rest of the cassekey’s associates, as aforesaid; but no other man, woman or child must touch or taste of this sort of drink; of which they sat sipping, chattering, and smoaking tobacco, or some other herb instead thereof, for the most part of the day.”

Alonso de Leturiondo, 1700: “The normal drink of the Indians of these provinces, and also introduced among the Spaniards of the Presidio, is one that they call cassina [caçina], taking its name from a little tree by that name, which they toast in jars [hollas] on the fire, they break it up, and when it is well broken up, they pour water over it and let it boil, and then they strain it and drink it hot.  It is a very healthy drink, and medicinal, and does not have the defect of intoxication like pulque, tepache, and other beverages of New Spain.”

James Adair, 1775: “There is a species of tea, that grows spontaneously, and in great plenty, along the sea-coast of the two Carolinas, Georgia, and East and West-Florida, which we call Yopon, or Cuseena: The Indians transplant, and are extremely fond of it; they drink it on certain stated occasions, and in their most religious solemnities, with awful invocations: but the women, and children, and those who have not successfully accompanied their holy ark, pro Aris et Focis, dare not even enter the sacred square, when they are on this religious duty; otherwise, they would be dry scratched with snakes teeth, fixed in the middle of a split reed, or piece of wood, without the privilege of warm water to supple the stiffened skin.  When this beloved liquid, or supposed holy drink-offering, is fully prepared, and fit to be drank, one of their Magi brings two old consecrated large conch-shells, out of a place appropriated for containing the holy things, and delivers them into the hands of the two religious attendants, who, after a wild ceremony, fill them with the supposed sanctifying, bitter liquid: then they approach near to the two central red and white seats (which the traders call the war, and beloved cabbins) stooping with their heads and bodies pretty low; advancing a few steps in this posture, they carry their shells with both hands, at an instant, to one of the most principal men on those red and white seats, saying, on a bass key, Y’ah, quite short: then, in like manner, they retreat backward, facing each other, with their heads bowing forward, their arms across, rather below their breast, and their eyes half shut...While the women are running about, and getting ready to dress the sanctified new-fruits on the sacred fire, the Archi-magus sends a religious attendant to pull some cusseena, or yopon, belonging to the temple; and having parched it brown on the altar, he boils it with clear running water in a large earthen pot, about half full; it has such a strong body, as to froth above the top by pouring up and down with their consecrated vessels, which are kept only for that use: of this they drink now and then, till the end of the festival, and on every other religious occasion from year to year.”

For my own experiment, the first stage of the process was to collect, dry, and parch the leaves.  While documentary accounts indicate that an earthenware jar was used to parch the leaves, I used a cast iron frying pan, stirring regularly as the leaves began to turn brown and smoke.  

The last moments of this process are a bit tricky in order not to completely char the leaves (or actually set them ablaze), but when the leaves appeared to be sufficiently parched/toasted, I poured them out into a bowl to cool a bit.

 

Most of the leaves turned various shades of brown, some of them puffing up in spots.  A few were nearly black, but none actually burned.

 Next, following a Spanish account from 1700, I crushed up some of the leaves, sufficient to fill one teaspoon measure, in order to brew a cup of tea in a standard Europeanized fashion.

Then I poured fresh-boiled water into a small container to let the crushed leaves steep for 6 or 7 minutes.

After this, I poured the result through a strainer into a white mug in order to have a look at the color.

The resultant tea looked very similar to Chinese green tea, and when served with a teaspoon of honey mixed in (no, the original version was not sweetened, but my intent was to enjoy the tea, not force it down as a science experiment), was excellent in taste and aroma.  Both my sons enjoyed the taste.  This, however, was clearly NOT the famed Black Drink of colonial-era fame.  It is obviously its weaker cousin.

Following several solid documentary accounts, I next tried a different brewing technique, one in which I took a medium handful of the unbroken parched leaves (about 1/2 cup) and simply put them to boil in a saucepan with about 3 cups of water.

I left this pleasantly aromatic and increasingly dark concoction boiling for about 2 hours straight, adding water along the way to keep the level about the same in the pot (and replacing that which had boiled away).  The leaves seemed to turn blacker and blacker as the boiling continued.

At the end of this process, the water had turned effectively black, making an excellent match for what the documentary accounts describe (and accounting for the name).

When poured into the same cup as before, the difference was striking; the well-boiled cassina leaves produced a beverage that resembled very strong coffee, and which had a stronger but nonetheless pleasant flavor and herbal aroma when sweetened with honey.  Toward the bottom of the cup the taste had a bit of an edge to it, but this may well be due to the fact that I over-toasted some of the leaves.  Next time I'll try parching the leaves a bit more lightly and see how it turns out.

I'm by no means the first to reproduce the Black Drink (I know at least one person who drinks it daily, and who kindly shared some pointers on how to brew it), but I was pretty pleased to have successfully made a very tasty version of cassina tea that I plan to drink more regularly as an occasional alternative to commercial coffee and tea.  And in a small way, it provides a link in practice with the indigenous peoples of the Southeastern United States, whose culture persists in many little and often unnoticed ways across the American South today.