Let’s Get Fizzical
Nitrogen infused tea differs in mouthfeel and flavor.
After the introduction and success of nitro coffee, it was only a matter of time before industry innovators began experimenting with nitro tea. Now glasses, mugs, goblets, and beakers of the foaming concoction are appearing on retail counters in big US cities. Fad — or a niche with staying power?
Let’s Get Fizzical:
Andrew Chau at Boba Guys
“We love tea chemistry,”says Andrew Chau, co-founder of the highly successful Boba Guys stores in San Francisco and New York, as well as the Tea People brand of loose teas. Chau, who spent 12 years as a brand and consumer product marketer before launching his own businesses with partner Bin Chen, also loves science, particularly the science of brewing tea. After discovering nitro coffee about three years ago, he and Chen partnered with the Bay Area’s Black Sands Brewery to tinker with nitro tea.
“I asked, ‘What does nitrogen do to sugars?’ ” says Chau. “Turns out, it brings out the [more delicate nuances] of black, smoky tea, for example, and intensifies the sweetness of a tea like Muscat oolong.”
Currently, Boba Guys stores do not have nitro teas on the regular menu, though Chau nitrogenizes two teas with a small, counter-size nitrogen charging station for a visitor to sample at the Hayes Valley location in San Francisco. But nitro is no fad for Chau and Chen. Plans are moving forward for a Boba Guys Nitro store in 2017.
“We are always looking to innovate tea,”says Chau.
Learn more: www.bobaguys.com
Let’s Get Fizzical:
Kristen Polich in Chicago
Cascading in Chicago
At The Cafe at LeFlour in Chicago, Kristen Polich is bullish on nitro tea.
“I found out through my coffee roaster that he had been kegging tea,” Polich says. “He used some different blends, then gave me some samples to try.” Her roaster used Benjamin Tea blended teas and Tea House single-origin teas, and the first nitro tea offering at The Cafe at LeFlour was a masala chai that used both a black tea from Tea House and a chai from Benjamin.
Polich offered it on tap, priced at $3.95 for a 10-oz. glass.“Customers really liked it,” she says. “They liked the foam, the texture, and the blend gave it vibrant flavor.”
She is only featuring one type of nitro tea at a time, buying two kegs from her supplier. The next nitro was “Peach Punch,” followed by the one that’s proved the most popular of all so far — “Lemon Pound Cake,” made with black tea blended with lemon oil, lemon rind and hibiscus. It was the perfect cooler on hot Chicago summer days, she says.
After experimenting with 10-oz. pours, Polich plans to offer 12-oz. and perhaps eventually 20-oz. cold cups of nitro teas. “I think it well may be the next thing in tea,”she says. “I hope to carry it year-round.”
Learn more: www.thecafeatleflour.com
Let’s Get Fizzical
Nitro tea is dispensed from a modified beer tap.
Contra filled a nitro need
In March 2015, Paul Del Mundo and Julie Nguyen co-founded Contra Coffee & Tea in Santa Ana, Calif. They’d discovered nitro coffee in San Diego three years earlier, and on their own began to consider nitro tea as well — and selling both as wholesalers. “We hit the ground running,”says Del Mundo. They began by offering the nitro brews at the downtown Santa Ana farmers market. “We wanted to perfect the process, rather than a product,”he says.
That process, Del Mundo says, is a trade secret, but once people tried nitro tea, they liked it, impressed with the mouthfeel, the lower calorie count and the lack of dairy.
Contra then introduced nitro coffees and teas to local retailers. “We did not do a hard sell at all,” says Del Mundo. “We have complete faith in what we do, and it’s been successful.”So successful, in fact, that Contra now supplies retailers in Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego counties with nitro teas and coffees. They sell on a case-by-case basis, he says, but most retailers average either a 2.5-gallon or a 5-gallon keg per week. These retailers are selling the product for between $4-5 per serving.
“We rotate our teas,” Del Mundo explains. “It might be an herbal tisane, it might be chai…one variation at a time.”
He’s convinced that not only is nitro not a fad, but the time will shortly arrive when millennials have kegarators in every home kitchen. In the meantime, Contra is contemplating a brick-and-mortar tasting room, and is already on the road in Orange County with a mobile tap room.
Learn more: www.contracoffeeandtea.com