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INWOOD, W.Va. (AP) — When he's not filling cavities, Ken Banks is filling bottles on the side.
Lots and lots and lots of bottles. About 5,000 a week.
If it were noted that this dentist in Inwood has a crew filling those bottles with a micro-brewed beverage, a first guess might be that he brews craft beer on the side.
But you'd be wrong.
"I'm a big fan of the craft beer industry and how they do things, but I'm also a big tea lover," Banks said.
Enter Doc's Tea, a premium micro-brewed tea now available in five states, 42 Whole Foods Markets and every Kroger in West Virginia with a health food section.
It has been quite a run for a bright idea Banks had in between filling all those cavities.
The inspiration for concocting a craft tea, sweetened with a protected Chinese fruit once grown centuries ago by Buddhist monks, came five years ago.
"I came up with the idea of trying to make a craft-brewed, healthy tea. I took the philosophy of the craft beer industry, and we just flipped it over into the tea side," he said.
The "we" is key, since the operation is a family affair, just as dentistry is in the Banks family. The tea operation includes his son and fellow dentist Christopher Banks. Meanwhile, daughter Sarah Langford — a dental hygienist and graduate of the Division of Dental Hygiene at WVU's dentistry school — handles the business side of Doc's Teas.
It took Banks several years to work out the kinks, build the brewery and go to market after his initial brainstorm.
Nowadays, Banks works Monday through Thursday peering into people's mouths. On lunch breaks, evenings and weekends, he's thinking about the art and craft of tea production in his 3,500-square-foot Doc's Tea micro-brewery. The brewery is located across the parking lot from his dental office in the small Berkeley County town he calls home.
A couple of other employees help run the machines that brew and bottle the tea. Banks, meanwhile, is the mastermind and chief tinkerer behind the Doc's Tea process and mission.
It all began when Banks began studying the labels of other teas on the market.
"Being a heath professional, I read labels and I read ingredients," he said.
Most of the teas on the market are made from concentrates, flavored with sugar or corn syrup and concocted using a "heat exchanger" that warms the tea concentrate to sterile levels and extends its shelf life. Banks turned the whole process of making tea into a craft operation, although he had some learning to do.
"That was the hardest thing in the industry. If you go out and start asking questions, nobody wants to talk to you much," he said. "I decided to build a little micro-brewery for teas. There really wasn't anybody doing a craft-brewed, micro-brewed tea. The way we do it, we have stainless steel tanks and steep all the product at one time, just like you would almost brew a cup of tea at home."
The base of the product is organic rooibos tea, a red, caffeine-free tea with high antioxidant qualities. Unlike most teas on the market flavored with concentrates, Doc's Teas are flavored with actual fruits and seasonings.
The flavors include Apple Cinnamon; Orange Ginger; Pomegranate Acai; Lemongrass; Island Coconut and the two newest flavors introduced a few months ago, Elderberry-Blueberry and Sangria.
In an effort to make the tea healthier, Banks looked for a sugar alternative.
"I wanted to get away from sugar and the effects that sugar has on us. We consume way too much sugar in our diet," he said.
He settled on monk fruit, which at the time was new on the market. In 2013, monk fruit earned the FDA's GRAS approval (Generally Recognized as Safe), shepherded through the approval process by the New Zealand company BioVittoria, a monk fruit champion.
Monk fruit contains antioxidants, which are metabolized differently by the body than natural sugars, according to draxe.com/monk-fruit, which means that despite its sweet taste, monk fruit contains no calories and has no effect on blood sugar.
For Banks, that meant his teas might be attractive to both diabetics and families concerned about how much sugar they and their children were consuming.
"The whole deal is to try to make it as healthy a product as we can, so we want to eliminate as much of the sugar as we can," Banks said.
Banks has bigger plans for the Doc's Tea brand, which, depending on where it is sold, can range in price from $1.99 to $2.29 a bottle.
"Probably our biggest competitor, I would say, is Honest Tea," he said. "When Coca-Cola bought Honest Tea they dropped the price down to $1.50. We're more expensive, but we're just a little bit different product."
There are a lot of teas on the market. But Banks feels he has a product suited for more health-conscious palates and a solid segment of customers in search of a tea both certified organic and kosher.
"The goal that we have is to someday take 20 percent of the market," he said.
So far, Doc's Tea has been entirely self-funded to the tune of about $500,000, Banks said.
To grow, the plan is to build the same kind of micro-brewery he built in Inwood in different locales throughout the East Coast.
"When somebody places an order, we'll brew the product. We'll have it fresh for them," Banks said.
Life is a whole lot busier now that he has two doctors' hats to wear.
"In the evenings, I walk from the dental office over to the tea building and work over there. I'm back and forth all day long it seems like."
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Information from: The Charleston Gazette-Mail, http://wvgazettemail.com.
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