Cocktails in the City: Tea Infusions w/ Tiosk

At the start of April, we took our trademark cocktail making classes on the road with us and pitched up in The Vaults Gallery in Waterloo as part of Cocktails in the City London.

We challenged our guests to ‘Be the Bartender’ and get hands-on with a range of spirits and tea infusions to create Long Tea Coolers.

Our wonderful tea suppliers for the event were Tiosk, an local independent tea brand who were set up with the mission to share authentic whole leaf tea with the world to inspire people.

They certainly inspired our very own Jake Rogers, who concocted a number of fruity tea infusions especially for the event. We sat down with him in the vaults and he talked us through his processes, and why we collaborated with the guys at Tiosk. 

What is Tiosk?

So Tiosk is a local, east London-based artisanal tea company that are based in Broadway Market. They do a really wide variety of speciality teas, with a really interesting and broad range of different varieties.

So why did we decide to work with them for CITC? 

They’re a cool, independent, local business like ourselves, so it was a good working partnership for that reason. But yeah, we heard good things and got in contact with them and the owner it turns out was very friendly and keen to get involved. So they just sent over some samples for us to play around with and we soon discovered that the tea was awesome.

So talk us through the infusion process. How did you use the tea to create them?

 So basically I made up a huge batch of around six litres of the various teas and then steeped the fruit in it. Each of the different tea infusions were paired with a variety of fruits and herbs – some had several and some worked with just the one. So I steeped the fruit in the tea and let the flavours marry and infuse over time, before adding in some Monin syrups to add that little bit of sweetness to the mix.

The infusions went down a treat with not only our guests but also the judges of the event, as we scooped the prize for Best Experience for our hands-on approach.

Hopefully all who attended our rolling classes left us with a little more appreciation for the power of tea in mixed drinks – and that it has far more uses other than being buried in a Long Island Iced variety.

A big thank you to the guys at Tiosk for being so accommodating and allowing us to have a play around with your stunning teas. It was a pleasure to collaborate on something that proved to be such a success.

If you’d like to have a look at their range and learn more about their ethos, you can check out their site here.