Functional Hydration, No Bottle Required: The Rooibos Advantage
The functional beverage shelves in grocery refrigerators have grown dense with brands. Some drinks address energy, and contain loads of caffeine. Others focus on digestion—kombucha, for example. The new wave of sodas, like Poppi and Olipop, also fix on digestion—they contain prebiotic fiber.
And then there’s hydration beverages, the elixirs containing electrolytes and other botanical ingredients that help quench thirst. That market is booming—expected to grow to as much as $12 billion by 2030, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8% to 12%. That’s serious growth.
Once embraced primarily by athletes—Gatorade is OG functional hydration beverage—now nearly everybody wants to optimize hydration, from jet-lagged travelers to sales road warriors to beach-going teens. They seek hydration with benefits—ingredients like magnesium, zinc and B-12. They want flavor—just plain old water is a bit passé. So are things like sugar, food dyes and artificial flavors.
The fresh flood of hydration beverages has raised awareness about the importance of healthy hydration—bodies struggling to remain hydrated experience inflammation, which impacts health. But the new drinks aren’t cheap. Many of them can cost $5 or more for a 12-ounce bottle or can.
Electrolytes, antioxidants, zero caffeine—rooibos brings hydration home
There’s a way, however, to DIY the hydration game at home—and to save a lot of money. Brew tea! Specifically, teas that contain rooibos (pronounced ROY-boss), the wonder plant South Africans drink constantly.
This plant contains electrolytes, those charged minerals like sodium and potassium that figure largely in the formulations for hydration beverages. While the electrolyte quotient in rooibos isn’t massive, it still matters. And as a caffeine-free beverage, rooibos maintains its electrolytes—caffeine can strip them away.
Meanwhile the plant contains other properties that boost hydration and overall health. For one, rooibos is low in tannins, which contributes toward better absorption of important minerals like iron. And with antioxidants like aspalathin and nothofagin, which are unique to rooibos, it can help support health, combat oxidative stress and reduce inflammation.
With summer’s heat upon us, along with the season’s many physical enchantments—hiking, cycling, kayaking, you name it—stay hydrated and healthy! And nail the hydration part of the equation by brewing rooibos.
All of the teas featured below, of course, are wonderful iced. Not only can you brew individual mugs that you cool down with ice, you also can batch a gallon or more of rooibos and park it in the refrigerator. Headed out for a long hike? Fill that thermos with cold rooibos.
Rooibos Tea for Hydration: Cape Town Medley and Cape Town Medley 1 Gallon Iced Tea Bags
Customers adore this beautiful tea, which combines rooibos with pomegranate—gorgeous red color!—pomelo and orange for citrus slaps, carrot for a savory note and safflower for floral qualities and texture. We find this tea is so thirst quenching that we included it in our small line of bagged teas. We’re all about whole-leaf tea at Ku Cha, but for the sake of convenience for brewing iced tea in large volumes, we package a select few teas in bags. And this is one of them! It’s available in both whole-leaf form and bagged.
Rooibos Tea for Hydration: Peach Rooibos (Organic)
Few—any?—fruits scream summer like peaches. The savory side of the summer equation has tomatoes and corn, peppers and cucumber. But when it comes to sweet fruit, we can’t think of any that surpass peaches. They’re truly iconic. So of course we could not wait to craft a thirst-quenching rooibos tea flooded with peach flavor. To the fruit we added soft calendula, a gently floral ingredient with appealing flavor and other advantages. Hydration drink with benefits? Absolutely.
Rooibos Tea for Hydration: Rooibos Provence
Summer in Provence. It’s a thing, isn’t it? Like winter in the Alps or autumn in New England. Something about the landscape, the coast, the breezes and sun captures qualities immensely evocative of summer. As we already loved rooibos, and understood its hydration and health advantages, we aimed to make some of our blends especially summery. This most definitely counts as one of them! The Provence elements come from rosehips, rose petals and lavender—all common across Provence. Then we added elderberry and blueberry, for fruit notes and health boosts—both elderberries and blueberries are superfoods.
A slip of summer—in every sip!
