Kratom tea is exactly what the name says: kratom leaf steeped in hot water, strained, and served as a drink. It is the oldest and plainest way to prepare the leaf, and it is the main way kratom is served at Kavasutra.
If you want the botany, what the leaf is and where it comes from is covered in our guide to kratom. This page is about the drink, how it gets made, and a piece of our own history that explains why we call our kratom menu the tea menu in the first place.
What Is Kratom Tea?
Kratom tea is brewed from the leaf, the same way any leaf tea is brewed. Hot water, time, a strainer.
That makes it different in kind from the other half of a kratom menu. An extract is leaf that has been concentrated through processing, and it arrives as a liquid, a powder or a shot rather than as something steeped. Tea is the unprocessed route: the leaf, water, and nothing clever.
Ours is brewed in house, served hot straight from the kettle or cold and flavored, and it is the drink a Kavatender will put in front of someone ordering kratom for the first time.
One item on our menu genuinely sits on both sides, and we are not going to tidy it away. Red Top is kratom tea and leaf extract at once, and it is the one item on the tea menu with caffeine added.
The First Kratom Tea in America
By our own account, Kavasutra sold the first retail cup of kratom in the United States, and the first kratom tea.
We should be straight about the status of that claim. It is our own telling, drawn from the people who were there rather than from a registry or a trade record, and we are not aware of anyone keeping an official ledger of American kratom firsts. We believe it. We cannot send you to a third party who certifies it, so we are not going to dress it up as a documented fact.
What is documented is where it started. The first Kavasutra opened in Lake Worth, Florida in 2008, and kratom went on the menu alongside kava because customers kept asking about the other leaf behind the counter. Brewing it as tea was the obvious way to serve it in a room already built around a prepared botanical drink. More of the origin story is on the about page.
The practical legacy is the vocabulary. Our kratom menu is called the tea menu because tea is what we started with, and the name stuck even as extract products joined it.
How It Is Brewed at the Bar
It is brewed in batches, in house, from kratom leaf and water, then strained and held for service hot or chilled.
There is nothing exotic in the process. The leaf goes into hot water, it is given time, and it is strained out. Flavored cold versions get their flavoring after that, which is why the cold ones taste like something other than leaf and the hot one tastes like leaf.
The unglamorous part, since we would rather say it than have you discover it: brewed kratom leaf is bitter and earthy, and plenty of people do not love it straight. That is most of the reason the cold flavored versions exist.
Each batch is made the same way, but the leaf itself is a botanical and botanicals vary. Differences between batches come from growing conditions, harvesting, processing and the natural variation in plant material. A Kavatender can tell you what is in the kettle on a given day.
Why We Do Not Publish a Home Recipe
A lot of people searching for kratom tea want a method and an amount. We do not publish either, and the reason is worth stating directly rather than leaving you to wonder.
Telling someone how much leaf to use is dosing guidance. We are a bar, not a clinician, and amounts keyed to an outcome are exactly the kind of advice we have no business giving to a stranger on the internet. It is the same reason a Kavatender will tell you what is in a drink but will not tell you what it will do to you.
So: we can tell you that tea is leaf steeped in hot water, that ours is brewed here in batches, and that the eight ounce is where a first timer starts. For anything past that, the honest answer is that we serve it rather than instruct on it.
The Sizes, and What Else Is on the Tea Menu
Brewed Tea comes in eight, sixteen and thirty-two ounces. The eight ounce is the first-timer size, because tolerance starts low and there is no reason to start high.
Beyond the brewed tea, the menu carries leaf extract items including #Boom, Shane’s Addiction, Stinger and Tea Drop, plus Black Top, Pink’s Lemonade and PCG. The concentrated extract items are the ones we recommend to experienced kratom drinkers only, and we will say so at the register.
There is also the Stinger Kratom Refresher, a twelve ounce canned kratom seltzer we carry at the bar. It is a packaged product rather than something we brew, and it has its own site if you want to read the label before you order.
Everything, with what each item is made from and in what size, is on the tea menu. We do not list kratom prices anywhere except there.
Who Can Order It
The tea menu is 21 and up at our Florida and Colorado bars, and 18 and up in Arizona, where state law sets a different age. Our Denver bar does not serve kratom at all.
That is why this page sits behind an age check. Nothing on this website sells or ships kratom, and everything on the tea menu is served in the bar. Each location page states what that bar carries.
Frequently asked questions
What is kratom tea?
Kratom tea is kratom leaf steeped in hot water and strained, served as a drink. At Kavasutra it is brewed in house and served hot from the kettle or cold and flavored. It is the unprocessed route, as distinct from an extract, which is leaf that has been concentrated through processing.
Did Kavasutra really sell the first kratom tea in America?
That is our own account, from the people who were there, and we present it as our telling rather than as a certified fact, because we are not aware of any official record of American kratom firsts. Our first bar opened in Lake Worth, Florida in 2008, and kratom joined the menu alongside kava there.
How do you make kratom tea?
At the bar, it is brewed in batches from leaf and hot water, then strained and held for service hot or chilled. We do not publish a home method or amounts, because specifying how much leaf to use is dosing guidance and that is not something a bar should give.
What sizes does kratom tea come in at Kavasutra?
Eight, sixteen and thirty-two ounces. The eight ounce is what a Kavatender will point a first timer toward.
What does kratom tea taste like?
Bitter and earthy. Plenty of people do not love it straight, which is most of the reason the cold flavored versions exist.
Who can order from the tea menu?
Adults 21 and up in Florida and Colorado, and 18 and up in Arizona, where state law differs. Our Denver bar does not serve kratom. ID is checked at the register.