Chai Tea Beer Recipe Help
 

looking for someone to give comments on this prospective recipe...


BeerSmith Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Chai Beer
Brewer: 3 Wangs Brewing
Asst Brewer:
Style: Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (??)

Recipe Specifications
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Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.5 gal
Estimated OG: 1.056 SG
Estimated Color: 9.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 20.0 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amount Item Type % or IBU
5.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 52.63 %
1.00 lb Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM) Grain 10.53 %
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.26 %
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] (75 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 9.8 IBU
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] (60 min) Hops 8.5 IBU
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] (5 min) Hops 1.7 IBU
20.00 items chai tea bag (Boil 5.0 min) Misc
3.00 lb Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 31.58 %
1 Pkgs Belgian Saison (Wyeast Labs #3724)
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Notes:
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Mash grains at 155 for 50 minutes. Mash out with 170* water to collect 6.5 gallon wort. With first runnings add FWH addition and 20 chia tea bags. Let rest for 30 minutes from start of wort collection. Remove tea bags, bring water to boil. Add hops per schedule. Add honey at flameout. Rest 10 minutes, then cool with wort chiller. Cool to 70*, pitch yeast.
Ferment 2 weeks, rack to secondary. Taste, add Chai tea to "dry hop" to taste.

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any suggestions would be nice! TIA!

Brewed this up yesterday...We'll see how it turns out.

I'm interested to hear how this turns out.

I brewed a tea beer not long ago with 20 tea bags worth of earl grey added at flameout. The aroma was great.

Saw a tea beer like this a few weeks ago and thought to myself "wonder if chai would be good in a beer". Glad to hear some one else is doing it let us know how it turns out I definitely want to try making one of these.

Almost 2 weeks.. Hows this coming along? Very interested..

Just saw this, everything about the recipe seems good except for the Saaz, just don't see Noble hops going well with chai flavors, but who knows it might work out well! Makes me wonder also, what kind of ibu's would tea add, not to mention the cardamom and cloves that are likely to be in a chai mix.

OK, so I racked this beer to secondary. OG was 1.054, today's reading was 1.015. The taste was not bad, but needed more Chai flavor. I made a tea with a pint of water from my tea pot and 6 bags of chai, let it steep for 15 minutes and added the tea and bags to the secondary.
Also, my LHBS did not have saison yeast, so I ended up using Safbrew T-58, which is a belgian strain I used with my Trappist last year. The yeast added a lot of flavor to the brew, so I want to counter with more Chai flavor. We'll see how the dry-hopping of the tea bags adds flavor over the next week.
As to the Saaz hops...well, I bought a pound of them with my last bulk hop buy...along with warrior and cascade. I was making this recipe up, and was not sure how much bitterness the tea would add, so I wanted to go easy on the hops, and the Saaz were the lowest AA I had at the house...This was my first time using them.
So, all in all, it needs some time to absorb the chai, so I'll chime in next time I taste it.

So, I kegged this today. So far I'm very happy with this beer. There is a definite Chai aroma and good chai taste to this brew. I was not sure how the chai would work into the beer and was afraid it would add too much bitterness; especially from 'dry-hopping' the tea bags, but if anything, it's a little sweat. FG was 1.010. It's tasty and refreshing. The chai it present, but not bold. If I make this again, I'd put more tea bags in the secondary and add more IBU's of hops.

So, after leaving this to cold condition and carb for a couple of weeks in my keezer, this turned out very good. Not something I would drink 3-4 glasses of every night, but definitely tasty. After letting it sit, now I don't think I'd change anything. It's good as it is.