Best Kratom Drinks for your Well-Being: Kratom Golden Milk

While regular golden milk is great on its own, kratom golden milk goes above and beyond the norm!

Golden milk has become a staple in evening wellness routines across the nation. This slightly-sweet-slightly-savory-creamy-and-bold evening treat is made with spices and roots that boast a solid range of health benefits.

Golden Milk Health Benefits

Each of the spices in kratom golden milk contributes not just to its taste, but also its impact on your body and mind! Golden milk (with or without the kratom) contains a number of alkaloids and polyphenols.

• Alkaloids are compounds made by plants that often have a physiological effect when consumed, like caffeine.
• Polyphenols are organic compounds found in plants that have a range of potential health benefits when consumed over the long term.

Turmeric contains the polyphenol curcumin, which is believed to improve inflammatory conditions, pain, degenerative eye conditions, and more. However, when consumed alone, curcumin has poor bioavailability. So how do you increase curcumin’s bioavailability to unlock its health benefits? Black pepper to the rescue! Black pepper contains an alkaloid called piperine. Piperine enhances the bioavailability of curcumin by 2000%. That’s why every good golden milk recipe will include both turmeric and black pepper together.

Kratom golden milk has all the alkaloids from kratom tea in addition to the active compounds found in regular golden milk. Kratom’s most abundant alkaloid is mitragynine, and there are over alkaloids in kratom that have a variety of effects.

Kratom Golden Milk Ingredients

All you need for this recipe is kratom tea, coconut milk, sweetener, and golden milk spice mix! You can make your own spice mix, or pick one up at the store. To save time, you can make a batch of the spice mix large enough for multiple uses.

If you use a store-bought golden milk powder, check to see if it has any added sugar. You can adjust the sweetener in the recipe as needed to account for sugar in the mix.

Bulk Golden Milk Spice Mix

To make your own bulk mix, add spices to a tightly sealed container or jar. The following quantities make approximately 24 servings of golden milk (1 tsp of mix per serving).

• 6 tbsp ground turmeric
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tbsp black pepper

Make Kratom Golden Milk Fast

The total brewing time listed for this recipe is 25 minutes, but it doesn’t have to take up that much of your time! 20 minutes are spent simmering the tea (covered) on low heat, so there’s not much effort required during that step. We’ve also found that most of the time that goes into making golden milk is spent gathering up the spices – that’s true for a lot of recipes! To save time, you can gather all the spices after your tea has started steeping.

Here are a few other tips to save time when making your kratom tea golden milk, or any other kratom tea drinks:

• Brew your tea in a thermos – no need to watch the stove! See recipe notes below for this method.
• Batch-brew a few days’ worth of tea at once.
• Use more tea bags and brew for a shorter time (then reuse the tea bags for a second steep later).
• Make a large batch of golden milk spice mix to use for a few weeks, or buy a mix from the store.

You read that right, you can use your tea bags more than once! Just make sure to store them safely after your first brew – if left out for a long time, the tea bags could grow mold or bacteria. If you want to reuse them, store them in an airtight container in the fridge for no more than 2 days.

Which Strain of Kratom to Use

We love drinking kratom golden milk in the evenings, one to two hours before going to sleep. The warmth of the spices and hot tea are the drink-equivalent of being wrapped in a thick, cozy blanket.

Because we like to make golden milk tea late in the evening, we use a red vein strain of kratom. In the recipe, we use Red Bali, but you can swap that out for whichever red vein tea you like best – or a different vein color if you prefer green or white. You should use the strain of kratom tea that best fits your needs! Using a different strain of tea to brew your kratom golden milk won’t noticeably change the taste.

Should I add lemon juice to kratom golden milk?

Nope! Though we often recommend using lemon juice to increase the strength of your kratom tea, we skip it when making kratom golden milk. The citric acid would cause the coconut milk to get clumpy, marring its creamy texture. Lemon juice aids the extraction of alkaloids from the kratom leaves, but it isn’t necessary for making a strong kratom tea. Here’s how to ensure your golden milk is strong without adding an acidic liquid:

• Steep your tea bags for at least 20 minutes.
• While your tea is steeping, keep it at a low simmer (or steep in a thermos to keep it hot).
• Use an extra tea bag (you can reuse the tea bags in a weaker second brew).

Best Milk for Kratom Golden Milk

Just like the spices, the milk you use in kratom golden milk adds to both its flavor and function. Some milks are better than others at unlocking the health benefits from the spices in the recipe.

Curcumin is fat-soluble, so you can potentially increase its bioavailability by making your golden milk tea with a milk that has a few grams of healthy fats. Some of the most highly recommended milks are coconut milk, almond milk, and hemp milk. Here’s our list of favorite brands that boast a moderate amount of fat AND great flavor:

• Thai Kitchen coconut milk: packed with flavor, best if you love coconut, and with the added bonus of packaging that’s easily recyclable!
• Trader Joe’s hemp milk: great nutritional value – low in saturated fat, with 5g of polyunsaturated fat per cup
• Silk Organic Soy: low in saturated fat, with 7g of protein per cup
• Silk Next Milk: the oat milk and coconut milk mixture has an unbeatable texture; it’s higher in saturated fat, a compromise for it’s thickness and creaminess

(By the way, none of these suggestions are advertisements – they’re just a few of the products we’ve used and loved in the Top Tree test kitchen.)

Kratom Sweeteners

You can drink your kratom golden milk with sweetener or unsweetened. We usually add 2-3 tsp of sweetener per cup, because the turmeric tea mixture can be on the bitter side.

Our favorite sweeteners for this recipe include coconut sugar, stevia (1/4-1/2 tsp), or maple syrup. Other popular options for sweetening kratom tea include agave, date syrup, or whole-leaf stevia.