Fizzy Hoppy Tea, photo credit: Eater.com
Sparkling tea is popping up on menus across the United States. Whether on tap or as a mixed beverage, sparkling tea has become standard fare for its taste and versatility. Plus it serves as a healthy alternative to sugary sodas.
Cafes across the country each have their own approach—from traditional to the sublime—to formulating and serving sparkling teas. Beer tea, anyone? Read on.
The Midwest is no stranger to sparkling tea.
Intelligentsia Coffee’s Wicker Park, Chicago, location offers Kilogram’s sparkling tea on tap. It is cold-brewed with CO2 added on-site. Flavors in the rotation include: Turmeric Tonic, White Peony, and Golden Needles.
Sparkling teas have also made their mark on both coasts.
Portland, Oregon’s Tea Bar introduced new flavors of soda-inspired sparkling tea beverages, reports Eater. The flavors are: Sparkling Lavender, Sparkling Hibiscus, Vanilla Rose (vanilla beans, rose petals and black tea), Root beer and Cardamom Chai, and Sparkling Tea Toddy (ginger, lemon, honey, cayenne and camomile). Tea concentrates are made in-house and then sparkling water is added.
Chico, California’s TBar & Fusion Café has an assortment of clever sparkling tea infusions, such as Mystic Mandarin, which is green tea with mandarin orange and a twist of mango, and Acai Pomegranate, a blend of black tea, acai berry, pomegranate and mango.
Further south in Los Angeles, G & B offers its very own Fizzy Hoppy Tea, cold-brewed tea mixed with hot-brewed hops, then carbonation is added. Co-founder Charles Babinski told Eater, “It’s daytime beer. It has all the best qualities of a beer without the alcohol.”
On the East Coast, Evy Chen, who founded Massachusetts-based Evy Tea, took her tea bar’s menu offerings on the road in an Airstream last summer, bringing her sparkling tea to events.
In November, a new tea bar opened in New York City’s East Village called 29B, which offers sparkling hojicha. “We cold-brew the [roasted green tea] for two to three days with a super high ratio of tea, then carbonate it to order and serve it in a crystal wine glass,” 29B founder Stefan Ramirez explained to Grub Street. “You have to remind yourself that it’s an alcohol-free drink. It has the same consistency and aroma and taste structure of something alcoholic, and visually, it’s just like drinking sake or wine.”
Caribou Coffee offers its Sparkling Green Tea Lemonade and Peach Black Sparkling Tea at locations across the country.
