Craft Tea Cocktails

SAN FRANCISCO—Whether camellia sinensis, herbal, or flavored, tea is a great way to add layers of complexity to cocktails, while its variety makes it easy to pair with just about any spirit.

Making cocktails with tea, however, is not completely new—tea was actually used in very early punches, the ancestors of modern cocktails. For example, the milk punch, one of the oldest teabased cocktails, was a concoction of black tea, port, lemon, and Batavia Arrack, a liquor popular during the 18th century.

Unsurprisingly, this tea trend extends even beyond the cocktail bar. Home bartenders can choose from a wide selection of tea-based mixology products, from bitters like DRAM Apothecary Black Cocktail Bitters to tea-infused cocktail syrups like those by Oregon-based company RAFT. For DIYers, there are even craft cocktail infusion kits like 1pt Infusion Kit, which includes pre-measured infusion blends for spirits, a glass bottle, instructions, and recipes. The infusion blends are designed to pair with different base spirits, and all of them include tea and/or botanicals.

There are different ways to incorporate tea in cocktails. You can infuse tea leaves directly into base spirits, create tea-infused syrups and tinctures, or use the steeped tea as a dilution agent.

INFUSING CREATIVITY

At Onsen, a Japanese-inspired bath house and restaurant located in the Tenderloin neighborhood, tea plays a key role on the menu. Betsy Mcleod, Onsen bar manager and gin enthusiast, uses tea to overcome a challenge.

“We are limited to work with soju and its limited flavor profile,” she says. “I wanted to make soju taste like gin and create a beautiful, floral, herbal base for every cocktail. Tea and herbal teas helped me achieve that because they have a lot of complexity, which will shine later on in the cocktails.”

For the cocktails, Mcleod infuses soju and sherry with teas and herbal blends by San Francisco-based tea company Tap Twice Tea, also featured on their extensive tea menu. Onsen tea cocktails are refreshing, balanced, and have a nice complexity of flavor. According to Mcleod, another advantage is that if cocktails have to be batched in advance and shelf-stable like at Onsen, tea can sit and will make the cocktail even more flavorful.

Chrysanthemum cocktail at The Bar at Hotel Kabuki.

Anna Mariani

DILUTION SOLUTION

At The Bar at the newly remodeled Hotel Kabuki in Japantown, beverage director Stephanie Wheeler serves her “Tea for Two” cocktails in teapots.

“It’s our version of a large-format cocktail but we decided to use tea as a base because we wanted to create something that you can drink warm or cold,” she says. “Obviously hot is a lot more popular, just because it’s always cold outside in San Francisco. They are called ‘Tea for Two’ because they are meant to be shared.”

Wheeler doesn’t infuse tea into spirits; she uses it mainly as a dilution agent and infuses it in syrups. She sources it from the Japanese grocery store down the street, Nijiya Market. Her reason for choosing tea as a cocktail ingredient lies in its versatility and flavor.

“The great thing about tea is that it can do just about anything water can when it comes to dilution,” she says. “I like to use particularly floral teas, I love how they trick your brain into thinking you are drinking something a lot sweeter than they actually are. We use jasmine tea and chrysanthemum, they have a little bit of bitterness and floral notes but they make you think you are drinking something a lot sweeter without the extra sugar.”

Getting to know the teas you are working with is very important to find balance in a tea-based cocktail and make its flavor shine.

“Study your teas and let the tea inspire you. It’s a lot of testing,” says Wheeler. “When you’re making a tea cocktail compared to any other drink, you want to start with the tea. If tea is your focus, you have to build the other ingredients around it, which can be a little counterintuitive at first, but I think that it makes a difference.”

Tea-infused craft cocktails have the potential to elevate any menu in a captivating and innovative way. It’s all about getting to know the teas you are working with, letting them inspire you, and finding that balance that will keep your customers coming back for more. FC

Coco Rosie tea cocktail at Onsen.

Anna Mariani