If you grew up in a Caribbean household, you already know cerasee. You knew it before you could pronounce it. You knew it by the face your cousin made. You knew it by the steam coming off the pot and your grandmother saying, "Drink it. All of it."
And you knew the taste. Bitter doesn't quite cover it. Cerasee is bitter the way the sea is wet. It coats the tongue, it lingers, and no amount of sugar fully wins the argument. And yet here we are, decades later, selling it by the bag to people who ask for it by name with something close to affection in their voice.
So what actually is it?
Cerasee is the Jamaican name for Momordica charantia, the same vine that produces bitter melon. It grows wild across Jamaica, climbing fences and swallowing hedges, with small yellow flowers and little orange fruits that split open to show bright red seeds. Most people never plant it. It just shows up, the way it always has.
For the tea, it's the vine itself that matters. The leaves and stems get picked, washed, and either brewed fresh or dried in bundles for later. Walk through any Jamaican market and you'll see it hanging there, tied with string, looking like nothing special. It is very much something special.
The "wash out" tradition
Every culture has its reset rituals, and in Jamaica, cerasee is the classic one. The old heads called it a "wash out." A cup of cerasee, usually first thing in the morning, taken for a few days at a stretch. Kids got it at the start of the school year, after too many holiday sweets, or honestly whenever grandma decided it was time.
Was there a schedule? A dosage chart? No. There was a grandmother, a pot, and a look that said this was not up for discussion. That's the tradition, and we pass it along as exactly that: a tradition, generations deep, part of how Caribbean families marked the rhythms of the year. Not medicine. Memory.
How it's traditionally brewed
Simple, like most bush teas. A small handful of dried cerasee goes into a pot with a few cups of water. Bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for five to ten minutes. The water turns a deep green-brown. Strain it, and then comes the personal part: some drink it straight and proud, some add honey or a squeeze of lime, and some just get it down fast and chase it with anything sweet within reach.
Fair warning if you're new to it. Start with a weaker brew. You can always make it stronger next time. You cannot un-drink a strong cup of cerasee.
Why people still drink something this bitter
We ask our customers this, half joking, and the answers are almost never about the taste. It's the smell of a kitchen in Clarendon. It's a mother who passed years ago. It's proof you can still do hard things before 8am. Bitterness, it turns out, carries memory better than sweetness does.
And some folks just genuinely come to like it. It happens. Give it twenty years.
Getting your hands on it
We keep dried cerasee in stock year-round at both shops. It sits in our raw herbs and superfoods section, next to the other bush teas your grandmother would recognize, and it's a steady favorite in our best sellers. If you've never brewed it, ask us at the counter and we'll walk you through it, including how to keep the bitterness civilized.
Come by either location: Lauderdale Lakes at 4273 N State Rd 7, or North Lauderdale at 8026 W McNab Rd. We're open Monday through Saturday 9am to 7pm, Sunday 11am to 5pm. Bring your cerasee stories. We've heard hundreds and we're not tired of them yet.
