How to Dry & Store Rose Hips for Rose Hip Tea

How to Dry Rosehips

Rose Hip Tea (Rosa canina) is so refreshing and packed with vitamins and minerals. A great hot Winter time drink. Delicately sweet, this is one of my favourites, and I consume it daily throughout the Dark Months.

For rose hip tea, simply put 1-2 teaspoons of dried rose hips in a tea pot, let it sit for 15-20 minutes, then strain into a cup. Drink at will.

Step 1

Pick as many rose hips as you think you need to last you until next year. I also wash them first.

Step 2

After washing your rose hips, dry them in the sun on newspaper. Then top and tail them by removing the stalk and the little pointy bit where the flower was. This isn’t important, but I do it.

Step 3

Normally I dry them whole, but this year I decided to test splitting 50% of the batch in half before drying. This made absolutely no difference, other than pleasure-ably wasting time 🙂

Step 4

For convenience and because the weather has not exactly been that sunny this year (2008), I used a food dehydrator.

Dehydration took about 5-6 hours for this particular batch. But this is “wild stuff”, so times may vary depending on the quality of the hips, how many you’re drying etc.

Step 5

When the rose hips have dried, this is what they look like.

Step 6

Next put them in a food processor. This year I borrowed my neighbours small one and it worked very well.

Step 7

Grind away until the contents look like below… you don’t want to grind the rose hips too small other wise in the next step they will simply fall through the sieve along with all the hairs… which kind of defeats the object of sieving (Step 8)!

Step 8

Tip the contents into a metal sieve, and just shake to remove all those pesky hairs that can be irritating to some people. I find it fascinating that they all easily fall through leaving you with some scrummy dried rose hips.

Step 9

Tip the dried rose hips into a jar or airtight container, and consume at will.

There is no need to go to the trouble of removing the seeds (unless you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with).

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  5. Do i leave the rosehips on the bush untill they turn Red? And does it matter wh at kind of rose you take them from?
    Mary Davidson

  6. I also planted some fever few and was Wonderingwhat to do with them.
    Do you just use the flower & how is it
    Used? Thanks for the help. Mary Davidson@

  7. Mary – Pick the rosehips when red. Any rose can be used, but ‘edible’ doesn’t necessarily mean tasty. The best flavoured ones I have found are Rosa canina and Rosa rugosa

  8. Mary – I don’t teach herbal medicine, so cannot advise. However I would be cautious with feverfew as it has a few contraindications. Please ask a herbalist.

  9. Loved your rosehip to make blurb, as I had a lot of one bush, and aware ob benefits of rosehip, Thank you

  10. Thank you for the information on,” how to dry fresh rose hips”, I have several rose bushes that give rose hips every year.

  12. Thanks for this! I was wondering how to do this, if you need to remove the seeds or not. I’m planning on blending them into powder to add to my dandelion root powder and make a blend.

  14. Actually I would be cautious of eating large amounts of fruits and vegetables from the roadside. And making wines from these fruits has been pretty much established that it’s really not a good idea to do so.

    Although lead is no longer in our petrol, you still have to think about diesel fumes etc. There are a number of studies relating to pollution and picking road side fruits and leaves etc. I list them below. Most are paid access, but you get the abstract for free, so draw your own conclusions. The first link points to a good discussion about this subject on Reddit… enjoy (well maybe)…

  15. I am wondering, do you have to wait until after the first frost to pick the rose hips, like when making jelly. Or can they be picked when they turn red?

  16. Joanne: These days in the UK if we waited until the first frost, the hips are either rotting on the bushes or the frost never appears 😉 Frost simply breaks the cell walls of the fruit thereby allowing more flavour and juice to be extracted.

    You can mimic frost by freezing your hips, then defrost and use in your recipes. And yes, you can pick them once they have turned red. I try and get a balance picking them, so I don’t want them like bullets, but neither do I want them turning brown and squishy. Hope that helps.

  17. Thank you for your clear instructions. Im new to foraging this year and greatly appreciate this site!

  20. So happy to have stumbled onto your site. Looking forward to staying connected. Have lots of ideas and need to learn so much more. Stay grounded on this lovely planet of ours.

  23. Feverfew flowers have been found to help with neuropathic pain. They’re best used as a tincture. Put all the flowers in a mason jar, (I was picking flowers every 2 days till the little jar was full). Pour on enough vodka to cover the flowers completely. Shake the jar every day for 2 weeks. Strain into another jar and put it somewhere out of sunlight and heat, to preserve the medicinal qualities. It can be kept almost indefinitely. For neuropathic pain, take 3 teaspoons a day in water. I advise adding some kind of sweetener, as it is extremely bitter! In tests, feverfew flowers have been found to be as effective as gabapentin, but without all the side-effects.

  24. The HAIRS definitely are pesky! While you are shaking the HAIRS out they turn into itching powder and fly around and get all over you. Beware of the HAIRS!

  32. Thanks for the info! I dried some earlier and took the seeds out, it was a long process…now I will do it your way…I also used some fresh ones to make sirop which is very nice.

  33. My rosehips are green. Are they ok to use? How do you tell canina from rugosa (or any other for that matter)?

  34. I live in Guyana and do not have access to the plant. Where can I buy some of the seeds online to plant here? Also, does it grow in regular sand?

  36. There is much to be made about Rosehip and its properties. Especially the action of its cancer destroying effect.
    I’m not asking Robin to endorse this whatsoever.
    Sigh!

  37. Thank you for the good post! After they have been dried, how long can they be stored and safely consumed? Does it get toxic after a while?

  38. Aniko – They can store indefinitely (within reason) however their food and medicine value will deteriorate over time unless vacuum sealed in something like mylar bags. My advice has always been to gather only enough to last until the next season.

  40. I have recently moved to the Pacific Northwest and there is a wild rose bush loaded with rose hips in the county owned field next door. Have no idea what type of rose it is but would love to pick the hips and try the brew. Is there any types of roses that are not good for brewing? Don’t want to risk getting sick if there is a chance of that.

  42. My rosehips are yellow and orange with some turning brown. Never saw red ones. Is it the kind of rose or are all rose hips supposed to turn red. My rosehips are from yellow roses.

  44. What is the effect on using the dehydration method when it’s comes to the seeds? Does the process of heat damage the seeds? I’m thinking because I would want to plant th we seeds for future use?

  46. This site is amazing! Is it beneficial for the flavour to freeze the hips even when drying them for tea or only when making syrup, vinegar etc.

  47. This is a wonderful article, including Robin Harford’s links to roadside pollution considerations. I’ve always just guessed about how far from roads to pick my herbs and fruits; now I’ll have real data for that. And thank you for this ingenious method for separating out the little hairs. My only solution had been to give up on making anything except tea from whole dried hips — after infusing, I strain and press the pulp gently through muslin. Your method will make my harvest much more versatile. One question: you make it clear that it’s best to freeze the lot before using, and so I assume that if I want to dry them, I first freeze, then thaw, and then put them in the dehydrator? Does this make a significant difference in just the taste or also the nutritional content? I’m from the States, and on a hike in Montana once in September (before frost), I picked several quarts of huge beautiful Nootka rose hips. They languished in the back of the car for the rest of our road trip, then I dried them. Fast-forward 3 years to last week: I found them in a jar in the back of the cupboard, and they were still red and intact, hard as rocks. I brewed them into a tea and the flavor was rich and rosy. Now I’m looking forward to discovering how much more rich and rosy my hips will be after freezing first!

  48. Heather – For the best flavour briefly freeze the hips, then defrost and dehydrate. Freezing breaks the cell walls allowing more flavour to come out. It’s done usually if you want to create syrups, jellies etc. So is not essential for making rosehip tea. It depends how lazy you are 😉

  49. Oh, I’m lazy for sure. It’s kind of a philosophy; it feels more in tune with a lot of the plants I work with. Or that’s my justification. Anywah, thanks again for this information. I’m glad I found your wonderful site!

  50. I have been drying rose hips for years and have never been that crazy about the final result, I usually just kind of cracked them. I tried your easy method of processing rose hips and voila I love this stuff now. Thanks for the great post, will definitely be following you in the future.

  51. I just picked some from my yellow rose Bush. The hips are all a bright resist orange and they are firm. Can I still dry them for tea. They are the size of large cherry tomatoes.

  52. Hi,
    How long is shelf life of a rose hips powder? If expired, can it still be used let say for a hair rinse?
    Thank you.

  53. Hi,
    How long is shelf life of a rose hips powder? If expired, can it still be used let say for a hair rinse?
    Thank you.

  54. Julia – I don’t keep my rosehips longer than a year. Simply because I gather each season. Also it is best to dry plants whole, then grind them to powder as and when you need them.

  55. If you keep them whole do you still need to grind them and remove the hairs for tea? Or can you steep them whole and dried?

  59. A colander after sifting worked for me, there are a lot of seeds and I was left with a more visually appealing mix.

  60. Thank you so much for these clear instructions. Great to be able to avoid cutting in half and manually removing those hairs. I froze the hips, then dried them until they were like bullets. The sieving worked a treat after blitzing and I now have a jar of rose hip tea. Delish!

  61. Hello, I have found lots of perfectly dried rosehips still on the branch from last autum. (They are some that are clearly rotten but a whole bunch that look as if they’ve been hand dried and stored) – do you think these will still have potency?

  62. This is very cool idea for dried rose hips. I was considering making jam which might have fresh rose hip in it, so I was hoping for an easy way to remove the hairs from fresh rose hip. Looks like I just have to buckle down and do the work. They hairs don’t tame after being boiled, do they? Like stinging nettle?

  63. I would strain the hairs out after cooking using muslin. So you might be better off making jelly or spend time simply deseeding and dehairing a few of the fruits and add them to your jelly/jam hybrid. Play and experiment.

  65. Thanks for such a wonderfully clear article with the Illustrated instructions. I have never been quite sure how to deal with rose hips because of the hairs and there are some beauties around this year.

  66. Tiny rose hips, about 1/4” long and less than that wide, no idea what kind of rose bush, something wild that comes up all over and my husband usually mows down – I found some he missed and they have these cute little rose hips. Can these be used for tea? I intend to let them air dry and they are too small to split open to remove hairs or seeds, but if I can use whole for tea I may go pick more.

  67. Thank you I have not used rosehips before, I have had to harvest ours early as our tree fell down in the storm! They are orange, green and a mixture, is there any way to ripen them? (I have left some on a tray, and most in the freezer.) Can the green /mixture ones just be used for tea? Thank you Margy

  68. I found your information on rosehips was very good.
    I have not used rosehips before. Our tree blew down in a storm, so
    I have a combination of green and mainly red/orange hips.
    Do you know if they will ripen (I have placed some on a tray)?
    I am concerned I manage to remove all the hairs after processing them, (do you have any tips on this?)
    Also can the green & partly green be used only for Tea ?
    Thank you for your help
    Margy.

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