The cross section for the production of single top quarks in the t channel is measured in proton–proton collisions at 13 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC. The analyzed data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 2.2fb⁻¹. The event selection requires one muon and two jets where one of the jets is identified as originating from a bottom quark. Several kinematic variables are then combined into a multivariate discriminator to distinguish signal from background events. A fit to the distribution of the discriminating variable yields a total cross section of 238±13 (stat) ±29 (syst) pb and a ratio of top quark and top antiquark production of R_t-ch. =1.81 ±0.18 (stat) ±0.15 (syst). From the total cross section the absolute value of the CKM matrix element V_tb is calculated to be 1.05 ±0.07 (exp) ±0.02 (theo). All results are in agreement with the standard model predictions.