Tea Time
A FEW YEARS AGO JENNIE RIPPS AND MARIA LITTLEFIELD were looking for a cocktail that was lighter and more refreshing than their typical bar fare. It had to be a drink that wasn’t bogged down by too much sugar, and wouldn’t be so strong as to end their night after a single drink; they are, in their words, “round two kind of gals.”
After Ripps founded her company Brew Lab Tea, which specializes in custom tea blends for restaurants, coffee shops, and other outlets, the two struck on the idea of blending tea with booze. They started by simply replacing the juice in one of their favorite cocktails, vodka-cranberry, with a cranberry tisane.
They began experimenting in earnest. Creating small batches out of Ripps’ Manhattan kitchen, they started testing their brews on friends, hosting boozy tea parties and bringing their tea cocktails to events. Guests would ask where they could buy the tea mixers, and they realized there was a market to pursue. The pair spent over a year blending and testing, finally launching Owl’s Brew at the end of 2013.
Every Owl’s Brew mixer is meant to work with a select group of liquors, wines, and beers, which are listed on each mixer’s bottle. It’s this versatility that makes Owl’s Brew such a beneficial mixer, one that can be used to modify flavors and layer with other ingredients.
Today the company offers eight tea mixers, with flavors for all palates and occasions. Each uses familiar teas like English breakfast or Darjeeling that even the most casual tea drinker could recognize. The mixers are made with organic tea and natural spices and fruit juices, all double-brewed at the same time, so the flavors are strong enough to show through in cocktails.
Curious newbies might start with the Classic, which combines English breakfast with lemon peel and lime juice, and is recommended with clear spirits, whiskey, or even wheat beer. The more elaborate Coco-Lada is based on chai tea, and blends ginger, cardamom, clove, and cinnamon with black tea, with an additional tropical spike from pineapple and coconut. It’s perfect for mixing with spiced rum or a neutral spirit like vodka.
Using natural ingredients was important to Ripps and Littlefield; while they concede that drinking can never truly be considered “healthy,” they do want their customers to “drink wise” by knowing that what they’re imbibing is real and natural. We can raise a glass to that.
owlsbrew.com.
