#kettl

I thought Kettl was just another matcha shop, but now that I’ve visited, I realize that it’s special. First, the founders purchase the teas directly from the best tea growers in Japan. They use date-stamped oxygen-free packaging and cold storage to ensure the freshness of the product. It’s not just matcha that they sell. They also have hojicha, oolong, buckwheat, and barley. The signs show the flavor profile of each tea, including sweetness, umami, astringency, fragrance, and depth of color. There is also information about the origin, flavor notes, method, preparation, etc.

There are currently three Kettl cafes, two in NY and the newest one in Los Angeles. They have tea flights or you can order a la carte. And there are classes (e.g., how to craft the perfect matcha latte) and events. The menu includes tea lattes and cortados, traditional matcha, iced teas, and brewed teas. If you sit at the tasting counter for the tea omakase, there’s a 20% surcharge. I also saw some Kettl chocolate bars, flavored with tea.

Iced sobacha (roasted buckwheat), $5. Served over ice. Light, toasted, refreshing.

Kettl x August sobacha ice cream bar, $14. Gorgeous packaging for a beautiful bar made with tiger nut milk. The bar was created by Chef Malcolm Livingston, former head pastry chef at noma and wd~50 using Kettl’s tea. His goal was to create a non-dairy, gluten-free, non-nut based ice cream (tiger nut is not a nut, despite the name). Tiger nut milk must be mild. I mostly tasted the coconut cream vs. the tiger nut milk. The bar was beautiful with a bit of crunch from the roasted buckwheat crispies (not sure what they were). The bar exterior had a roasted flavor. The ice cream portion was fairly creamy and mild with a clean aftertaste. Worth $14? I’m not sure but it was clearly high quality. You can only get the bars at Kettl Los Feliz.

The space is understated, elegant, and serene with light wood, white walls, and globe pendant lamps. It looks like a place you’d see in Japan. There is a large communal table upstairs, tasting counter downstairs (reservations required), and a small seating area in the back. Finding parking will be a challenge. There is a rewards program.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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Actually, That’s A Tisane

Late in 2017, I couldn’t sleep. I was up all night, in fact. After several weeks of sleepless nights, lost in a fog of midnight madness, I decided to try the unthinkable: I give up caffeine. It was early 2018 and still the season of New Year resolutions and self-care regimes so it seemed like a good time to introduce the idea that I, the founder of coffee blog Sprudge, would go caffeine free in 2018.

I experienced about three days of headaches brought on by the withdrawal, but it didn’t take long( and it doesn’t take long for most) to acclimate to life without the stimulant. The only thing missing was the rite of enjoying a hot liquor in the morning. Fortunately, I live in a city with a lot of cafes with excellent tea programs and those programs tend to have a few caffeine-free alternatives on offer. Indeed, almost every cafe has at least one herbal infusion, a botanical mixture, or fruit-forward tisane, and as I continued what would be a seven-month journey of caffeine abstinence, I detected delicious offerings beyond your run-of-the-mill rosehips or chamomile.

Just don’t call it tea.

While many call the following drinkings herbal teas, these are* actually* herbal tisanes. Tea is a plant, Camellia sinensis, and if it’s not from that plant it’s not really tea. This is a quite simple thing but it is wildly and widely misunderstand, and for tea professionals who do this stuff full day it is deeply frustrating, to which I sympathize.

Tisanes aren’t teas, but they are highly delicious, or at the least they can be in the right hands. For the purpose of this guide, we’ll explore a range of beautiful immersing blooms, roots, plants, and fruit served warm and delightfully free of caffeine. I invite you all to correct your friends, tut-tut your family members, and go forth calling the drinks in this guide tisanes–botanical tisanes if you’re feeling especially fancy.

These drinkings can be made at home with very little equipment or expertise and are available to purchase on the internet( or in some cases your produce aisle !) but they also get along quite swimmingly with gear from Breville, our sponsors here at Tea Week, whose scope of automatic steeping systems seem ready-made for the thirsty tisane fan. For those at home counting, these tisanes are low calorie, vegan, mostly gluten-free *, keto, paleo, South Beach approved, and mostly sugar-free **.

A note about health claims: There are a lot of claims out there about the healthful benefits of ingredients like ginger, turmeric, mint, and many others in the tisanes below. While these are all well and great we’re going to base these suggestions purely on the savor experience and enjoyment factor–not their purported healthfulness.

Produce Aisle Winners

The following tisanes are simple to make and use fresh ingredients that most can find in their local specialty shop, farmers marketplace, or grocery store.

Ginger Root

Ginger is a lovely tisane with a tremendous flavor. It’s a spicy meatball if you’re heavy on the ginger so I foster you to start out utilizing about a tablespoon per beaker of hot water to start and moving up from there. At this point, I jam in as much ginger in my tea-pot as I can.

Steeping ginger photographed here in the Breville One-Touch Tea Maker.

Preparation: Carefully peel ginger root and slice into small coins( the smaller, the more infuse-able surface area ). Boil water and immerse for at the least ten minutes. Strain and serve immediately. Wonderful with the addition of lemon and honey.

Hot tip: The Breville One-Touch Tea Maker will infuse ginger root in boiling hot water for 10 minutes at a time.

Fresh Peppermint

Fresh mint tea is a staple in Amsterdam cafes and couldn’t be simpler: stuffing mint leaves in a glass and steeping them in water. No tea pouches or filter necessary! Not merely is it a pleasure to drink, it’s also a beautiful presentation.

Preparation: Rinse peppermint leaves exhaustively. Place a considerable quantity in a tall tempered glass. Pour simmering hot water over leaves and steep for five minutes. Drink from the glass!

Beautiful Blends

These tisanes are a mix of dried ingredients–most offered in grab-and-go sachets or in their loose form.

Organic Turmeric Tonic

The Organic Turmeric Tonic from Kilogram Tea is a blend of turmeric root, ginger, lemon verbena, licorice root, lemon peel, and citrus oils. It’s warming, spicy, and somewhat bitter. The pyramid-shaped filter pouches are a nice touch and keep those pesky pieces of roots out of your drink.

Source: Kilogram Tea Price: $8.99 for fifteen pouches. Also available bagless.

Also worth checking out: Rishi Turmeric Ginger, which all but saved my life during a most unpleasant 2016 Winter season.

Blend No. 67: Meadow

Portland, Oregon’s Steven Smith Teamaker renders this tasty blend of” golden Egyptian chamomile blooms and mildly stimulating, fragrant hyssop joined with smooth Cape rooibos, rose petals and linden blooms .” It has a pleasant mouthfeel and sweetness and a pleasure to steep and re-steep.

Source: Steven Smith Teamaker

Price: $11.99 for 15 sachets. Also available loose.

Carrot

Song Tea in San Francisco creates botanical combinations that simulate the profile and visual representation of their traditional teas. Carrot is a” blend of domestic dried carrots and burdock, South African honeybush, Chinese ginger, and Indonesian sweet cinnamon” and has a remarkable fruit quality backed up by the spice of the ginger and cinnamon. Should you come across a coffee bar serving this tisane, it pairs wonderfully with a single-origin espresso shot.

Source: Song Tea Price: $14 for 120 grams, loose.

Single-Origin Tisanes

These are perhaps the highest-end tisanes on the listing in terms of cost and dearth in the US. Available through special importers, the following tisanes aren’t for the faint of heart( but they sure are delicious ).

Kettl Nagano Soba Cha

Sugars in the buckwheat kernels caramelize in the toasting process devoting this tisane almost a sugar-cereal-in-the-morning flavor but in a really good way. Sourced from Nagano by Kettl, this beverage is one of our favorites.

Preparation: Kettl recommends steeping 5 grams in 200 ml of 205oF water for but a minute.

Source: Kettl Price: $20/200 grams

Roasted Black Soybean

Tea Merchant sells this roasted soybean tisane that also doubles as a snack( the beans can be feed once they’ve been immersed !) These soybeans are a smaller cultivar known as Sengoku from Hokkaido. The drink is somewhat savory and has a nice sweetness.

Preparation: Steep 5 grams in 200 ml of 195 oF water for a minute up to three times.

Source: Tea Dealers Price: $16/100 grams

Wild Persimmon Leaves

To wrap up this guide I present another offering from Tea Merchant: wild persimmon leaf tisane sourced from Hadong, Korea. The tisane is orange, like the fruit, but has an herbaceous and nutty quality.

Preparation: Steep 5 grams in 180 ml of 176 oF water 3-4 times.

Source: Tea Merchant Price: $38/50 grams

This guide is just the beginning to the many caffeine-free possibilities that exist out there. There are hundreds of herbs, botanicals, roots, foliages, branches, fruits, and heck, even bones out there to throw in heated water and infuse for one-to-several minutes. Drink up!

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

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