3 tea-infused cocktails to get you through the week

I had been chatting with friends recently, and we came up with an inside joke of sorts for those moments when there’s figurative tea being served but at the same time it’s funny or crazy enough to make us want to get a (hard) drink, too: we’d figuratively/virtually ask for or pass around glasses of teacohol.

Teacohol (tea + alcohol, get it?) isn’t actually an entirely new concept. A number of bars and mixologists have long been mixing tea into their cocktails. We’ve written about a few of these drinks before, actually. (Check out The Back Room’s Right in the Kisser, or Nomu’s matcha sour)

But what I’ve recently learned is that you don’t have to be a professional mixologist to be able to put together a drink using tea and your choice of liquor.

I tried my hand at making some “teacohol” (okay, I know we can just call them tea cocktails, but that’s boring) and I must say… they’re rather deceptive. Because the taste of liquor is often masked by the tea and other flavors, the cocktails become so easy to down—and fast, too.

*The “Alamat ng Kanto” tea cocktail by Agimat’s Kalel Demetrio. It uses English Breakfast tea, Kanto salted caramel vodka, and panutsa.*

Cove Manila mixologist Faye Fernando, who was also a finalist at the Diageo World Class 2017, came up with this tea mocktail called the Floral Sunset. It uses Earl Grey tea mixed with Monin orange spritz and flower blossom with lemon juice

If you want to try your hand at making your own tea-infused cocktails, here are three easy mixes to get you started:

Not-so-Long Island Iced Tea

Unlike the traditional version of Long Island Iced Tea, this “version” only uses rum, and actually uses tea. It’s fairly simple: just mix rum, cold black tea, a bit of lemon juice to taste, a bit of sugar syrup, and shake or stir as you prefer.

An even simpler version: mix rum with lemon iced tea.

#MTotd

*You wouldn’t even think this has liquor until you taste it*

At Lipton’s Teamagination launch, NoKal’s mixologist Jay Natividad came up with a boozy spin to today’s most popular drink: milk tea. English breakfast tea is mixed with Cointreau Noir, dark rum, and Monin toffee syrup, along with milk and cream for a milk tea-like cocktail. He even added black tapioca pearls to complete the drink.

Afternoon tea-cocktail in the office(?)

*Me, an absolute amateur, in the middle of making a cocktail*

*The finished product looks and tastes pretty good if I do say so myself.*

We also tried crafting our own cocktail with some friends from F&B Report. We mixed Lipton green tea with jasmine with Monin elderflower syrup and dark rum. Shake well to get that nice foam on top, and then garnish with dried citrus fruits and flowers.

If served ice cold, I would honestly have this refreshing cocktail every afternoon if I could. (Please don’t tell our HR.)

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Writer: PAULINE MIRANDA
PHOTOGRAPHY DANICA CONDEZ