Can You Get Drunk on Tea?

Tea is the second most-consumed drink in the world, just behind water. But drinking tea can cause you to get drunk? Tea is a fermented drink, but there are some steps that need to be taken before becoming an alcoholic. As long as you haven’t brewed it for too long or added too much sugar, your tea will not become alcohol.

To become an alcoholic drink requires a couple extra steps and ingredients. Fermentation happens when yeast and sugars react with enzymes present in fruit juice, vegetables or grains like barley to produce ethanol – this alcohol is then diluted by adding more juice or water (usually boiled first). For instance, to make vodka one must first make a number of other spirits, and then distill most of them for days in order to get the desired strength.

Tea is not fermented though; it’s just that your stomach produces lactic acid which interacts with caffeine, an alkaloid present in tea, to dissolve the crystal structure of tea leaves into tea broth. This time is short though; about 3 to 5 minutes. If you feel tipsy after drinking more than a cup, you are just experiencing the caffeine high.

So how do we get drunk on tea?

#1. Brew tea for too long or very strong:

In most cases the longer and stronger your tea is brewed, the more alcohol content it will have. You should wait with most teas (black tea belongs to this category) until they completely cool before adding a little sugar and drinking them cold. This way you’ll avoid the alcohol content becoming too high. And never add milk to your tea, otherwise, it will become alcoholic as well!

#2. Use strong black tea:

Different types of teas are not created equal; some are stronger than others, and some can even contain higher amounts of caffeine.

When it comes to caffeine content, white tea is usually considered the weakest in this category, with black tea having the most caffeine, and green tea being somewhere in between. But when it comes to alcohol content, they’re all pretty much equal.

In fact, since teas come from plant leaves the amount of tannins they have will determine their lack or abundance of alcohol. The more tannins a plant contains, the more it will compete with ethanol and you will not be able to get drunk on it.

In addition, tea being weakly acidic, the addition of lemon or lime juice will also help to lower tannins and keep your tea from getting toxic. You can try a Chinese Red Tea with some lemon or a hot Americano; you won’t regret it!

But I don’t recommend drinking too many cups of tea in one day, unless you really want to. So you should really be careful with how much you drink. A few cups of tea in a day should not be a problem for most people, but more than that could lead to excess consumption of caffeine and tannin.