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How to Make the Best Kratom Tea: Beginners Guide

Introduction

Today we’re going to explain how to make the best kratom in the world. If you’ve read our previous guides for making kratom tea, you have a great foundation we can build on.

The updated 2022 kratom tea guide puts everything together into one resource. It’s a one-stop-shop for learning how to master kratom tea. We cover everything from what is kratom, to more complex subjects, like how to choose a strain for kratom tea.

We’ve broken the blog into sections based on popular kratom questions. We start with a quick discussion about kratom, the plant, before moving onto kratom tea specific topics. For those of you who already know how to make kratom tea, the second half of the blog is for you!

After explaining how to make kratom tea, we dive into brewing with kratom tea bags. We give a few pro-tips for creating delicious, effective kratom blends, then we discuss what makes Top Tree tea unique.

By the end of this post, you’ll know how to choose a kratom strain, how to make strong kratom tea, and where to buy everything you need to get started.

For everyone who is new to kratom tea, we hope you’ll find this post helpful. It’s everything we believe you should know as you embark on your kratom tea journey. We hope it helps!

Topics for Today:

What is Kratom?

Kratom is an evergreen tree in the coffee family native to Southeast Asia. Based on written historical records, we know the leaves have been traditionally brewed into tea, or otherwise chewed and spat out, for hundreds of years. In all likelihood, the use of the leaves stretches back thousands of years.

The traditional use of kratom centers around the Thai working class. Farmers and day laborers use it to help increase endurance and energize their day, similar to how coffee is used in the US today. More specifically, kratom helps boost the workers stamina and supports overall well-being during long laborious days in tropical heat.

The immense cultural importance and popularity of kratom throughout the history of Southeast Asia should not be overlooked. The recommended use of kratom is etched in the walls of historic Buddhist temples and popular street puppet-shows praise the benefits of the leaf.

What is Kratom Tea?

Kratom tea is one of the two ways people traditionally consume kratom. Many of those living in kratom’s native habitat will simply pick a leaf fresh from the tree and briefly chew it while pressing the juices against their tongue and lips. When they don’t want to chew them, leaves are added to boiling water to make tea.

Kratom has been in the United States for less than half a century. Traditional kratom culture is relatively unknown and as such most US consumers eat the powder.

The problem, however, is that swallowing kratom powder can lead to stomach discomfort, while tasting like dirt flavored sludge.

Plus, eating raw powder skips on the sterilization process that goes hand in hand with the boiling water used for tea. Clearly, a better method is needed. Enter kratom tea

Tea is by far the most pleasurable and healthy way of consuming kratom. Kratom tea has a distinct bitter, earthy flavor that quickly takes on a personality as you grow accustomed to it. One of the benefits of using tea bags is that flavor can be added alongside other complimentary herbs.

These flavors and herbs work in concert to increase the taste and effectiveness of your tea. Our herbal tea bags—crushed leaf kratom blended with other traditional supporting herbs—are engineered to complement specific activities.

Types of Kratom: Strain Guide

Kratom follows a straightforward naming convention. First, the color of the leaf powder is given. This reflects both the age of the leaf when it was picked and how it was dried and left to cure.

Typically, there are three colors: white, green, and red. (Some vendors may mix these colors to create novel colors.) Next, the name of where the leaf was harvested or where the tree cultivar was originally found before being transplanted. For example:

·White Thai = white vein kratom from Thailand
·Super Green Malay = strong green vein kratom from Malaysia
·Red Bali = red vein kratom from Bali, Indonesia

For beginners, the sheer number of strains and colors can be confusing. Plus, the naming convention used by US kratom brands is an invention! The real difference between kratom products comes down to which alkaloids are present.

Alkaloids are the compounds in kratom that create the majority of the effects felt from consuming kratom tea. So far, researchers have discovered over 40 different kratom alkaloids in kratom leaves. Usually, individual trees will contain roughly 10 alkaloids, with three or four dominating.

Given the complexity of kratom as a natural product, the alkaloid ratio in products with the same name, but of a different harvest, can be completely different. This is why we recommend staying open minded rather than settling on one strain.

Currently kratom alkaloid information is scarce, and there have been few studies concerning the role they play in the total effect. Top Tree is intent upon both making our alkaloid ratios known, but also in contributing to the scientific understanding of the effects of these ratios on our tea drinkers.

To do so, we’ve partnered with top kratom scientists out of the University of Florida to conduct a survey of our customers! To learn more about the research, check out our conversation with Hamilton Morris and Dr. Oliver Grundmann. And to participate, please visit https://www.tinyurl.com/KratomTeaSurvey

Which Tea Is Right for Me?

Everyone has a different serving size that is right for them. If you’ve never tried kratom before, we recommend that you start with one or two tea bags. Kratom is unique in that it has different effects based on how much you drink.

With one to three tea bags, you’ll likely feel energized and have a cheery mindset. As you start to brew more tea bags or drink more kratom tea, the effects switch from energizing to calming. Those looking to wind down after a long day typically settle on larger serving sizes for this reason.

Here are a few tips for helping you choose your tea!

Our White Maeng Da and White Borneo strains are good for replacing caffeine, and we usually reach for them in the morning.
The Green OG Bali kratom tea bags are best described as being the middle ground between the two ends of kratom’s effects. It is energizing without the intensity of the push of our white strains and warming and relaxing without the drowsiness of the red strains.
Red Bali is a great post-workout option. As a classic red vein kratom tea, it can help you relax at the end of your training session and transition into a calming evening.

To put this all together, our white strains may be best for a high intensity training session. Our green strains are good for yoga or more flow state focused exercises. And our red strains are best for winding down after a long day of physical or mental exertion. However, it’s just as important to remember that…

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to kratom tea! Everyone is unique, has their own body chemistry, and may find that different strains at different serving sizes act differently for you than us. Our final word of advice is to start with a smaller serving size and experiment.

How Do I Make Kratom Tea?

Our kratom tea is exceptionally easy to make. You only need three key ingredients. Water, your kratom tea bags, and some lemon juice, either fresh or from concentrate. For equipment, all you need is our kratom tea thermos, but any vacuum insulated thermos will do.

To start, add your kratom tea bags to your thermos, and add a squeeze of lemon or a splash of lemon juice from concentrate. This addition of an acid is essential to increase the efficiency of the extraction of the active alkaloids from the leaves.

While you are mixing your tea bags and lemon juice in your thermos, you should start boiling some water. Once it reaches a rolling boil, add it to your thermos. The goal is to keep the water as hot as possible for the entire 20-minute steep.

If you’re going to flavor your tea—either with a Top Tree herbal blend or your favorite herbal tea—you have two ways to go about it:

The easy route is to add it to your thermos with the kratom tea bags from the beginning. The second method, designed to optimize the delicate flavors of the additional herbs, is to wait until you have about five minutes of steep time left before adding it. This reduces the amount of bitterness and tannins extracted from the herbs.

After 20 minutes, your tea is ready to go. Simply pour it into your cup, sweeten and enjoy. And if you’re using 3+ tea bags at a time, you can rebrew the same tea bags again for a second (slightly weaker) tea! Simply add more boiling water to the thermos immediately after pouring the first cup.

A Note About Kratom Science:

For those of you who prefer data over general descriptions, you’re in good company. A core pillar of our mission—beyond delivering you the best kratom tea in the world—is bringing a consumer perspective to kratom research.

To that end, we’ve collaborated with Santé Laboratories and Dr. Oliver Grundmann, University of Florida, on an exciting new kratom tea white paper. It’s a detailed analysis of kratom tea brewed under different conditions. The final paper will give you a never-before-seen snapshot into your cup of tea. Although all kratom varies from batch-to-batch, the findings will lay a foundation for all kratom tea drinkers to learn from.

In the meantime, preliminary results show that brewing in a vacuum thermos with lemon juice has a profound effect on the alkaloid extraction process. In short, if you want strong kratom tea, don’t forget to use a thermos and lemon juice!

When Is the Best Time to Drink Kratom Tea?

When using kratom to exercise, where the goal is increasing performance, it’s best to drink it about 30 minutes before starting your workout.

It takes 20 minutes to brew completely, so you should brew your kratom tea about 50-60 minutes before you plan to workout.

Pro-tip: many of us prepare our tea before bed, so it steeps throughout the night is ready by morning. If you start your day at the gym, this is the best ways to brew without delaying getting out the door.

We’ve found that green and white strains work about equally in energizing us for a workout. Some people also like combining their kratom with caffeine before training, which is a good option as well. In terms of deration, the effects of kratom are generally apparent for about four hours after drinking the tea.

There isn’t a big secret to exercising with kratom. Well, aside from knowing how to brew it and when to drink it. However, we do highly recommend increasing your water consumption when drinking kratom tea. Like coffee, kratom is a diuretic, meaning that it will slightly increase the amount that you pee. The best way to avoid dehydration is drinking more water than normal.

What does Kratom Tea feel like?

Just like coffee, the initial effects are felt as you consume your tea. At smaller servings, most people report feeling more energetic and focused. The serving size for increased concentration typically falls in the 2-to-5-gram range.

Note: effects will vary from vender-to-vender, and batch-to-batch, so don’t assume you’ll have the exact same experience every time. The best way to overcome that is buying kratom tea online in large quantities. It helps if you don’t have to bounce around between different sub-par head shop kratom brands.

As the serving sizes increase, the effects begin to tilt in the other direction. The energizing effects slowly give way to feels of calmness and relaxation. At the higher range (5 to 10 grams) the effects are felt most strongly in the body, a soothing feeling that’s great for easing into the evening after a long workout or hard workday.

And if you only remember one thing about kratom serving sizes, it should be this: less is more! It’s a common phase in kratom that we totally agree with. In practice, in means that step one is finding your ideal effect. And step two is not increasing your servings over time.

Responsible Kratom Consumption Practices

One of the unfortunate aspects of kratom today is the disconnect between what venders say and what you find online if you google “kratom.” And the issue goes both ways: vendors don’t want to acknowledge the potential downsides of kratom, and regulators don’t want to acknowledge its benefits.

In our view, this dynamic impedes normalization and creates an unnecessary conflict between kratom companies and regulators. The Kratom Consumer Protection Act (KCPA) is one solution, which we fully support, but it’s also important we (as consumer) practice responsible kratom consumption.

In other words, moderation is key with kratom! If you use more than your body is used to, the effects reach a ceiling, like with coffee, and can turn unpleasant. In the extreme, people report feeling hot, nauseous, or dizzy. The solution, once again, is to follow a simple rule of thumb: find your ideal serving size and don’t consume more in any given day.

How Does Top Tree Herbs Ensure the Quality of its Tea?

We founded Top Tree on the premise that kratom tea drinkers should have an option for simple, effective, delicious tea. As part of our mission, we only use the highest quality kratom on the market, which means a couple things.

First and foremost, all our crushed leaf goes through rigorous lab testing for heavy metals and pathogens (mold), so you know your kratom tea bags are contamination free. We also test for alkaloid content, a complex process that only a few labs in the country can do.

In addition to testing, all our kratom comes from an AKA certified vendor who helped establish the cGMP standards for the industry. Many vendors import directly from Southeast Asia, but we decided to work with the leading US kratom brand instead to ensure our kratom is the highest quality possible. In short, we partnered with the most trusted brand in kratom so you know your kratom tea is a truly premium product.

Beyond maintaining a high-quality standard for all our kratom teas, we work with leading kratom researchers to continue driving kratom research forward. Our goal is to help champion a new approach to kratom, where quality means more than just the product itself. It’s supporting quality research, sustainable business practices, and contributing to the research that is laying the foundation for the future of kratom in America.

What Makes Top Tree Herbs Kratom Tea Bags Special?

In other words, what sets us apart from other kratom brands is our commitment to science and tradition. Kratom is critically understudied, which is why we are engaged in several studies and experiments with labs and scientists across the country. We also believe that the way kratom is commonly consumed in the United States is contrary to tradition, unpleasant, and unsustainable.

The main reason people eat kratom powder is because they were introduced to it without any context of its traditional forms or preparations. Our community is slowly changing the narrative, which is helping recast kratom in the proper light: as an herbal tea that doesn’t deserve media sensationalism or a negative stigma.

Our mission is improving, sharing, and normalizing kratom tea. We believe in learning by engaging indigenous practices of traditionally consumed plants – and Top Tree tea is exactly that. We’re truly grateful for the opportunity to share kratom tea with you and we hope you enjoy.

Please reach out with questions, comments, or concerns. We’re here to help!

Conclusion

We hope you’ve found our kratom tea guide helpful. We’ve learned a lot about kratom tea over the past two years, and love sharing it with the kratom community. We have more exciting projects planned for the coming months, so stay tuned for more data-driven kratom content down the road.

As we explained today, kratom tea should be simple, effective, and delicious. As an herbal tea, it’s a great tool for optimizing your day. Kratom tea has a long traditional of use around the world, and we’re proud to be able to help bring the practice to us kratom consumers.

As you get started on your kratom tea journey, please think of us as a resource. We’re a company of long time kratom lovers who understand how confusing things can be when you’re new. There’s a lot of conflicting information online, so we hope this guide helps you make well-informed decisions about how you integrate kratom tea into your personal wellness practice.

Until next time, we’re here if you have any questions, and cheers to better brewing!

Brew Guide, Crushed Leaf Kratom, Kratom Benefits, Kratom Tea Bags