Hard Iced Tea - Page 3

NerdyMarie · 03-28-2011, 02:14 PM

We saw Arizona iced tea gallon jugs on sale this weekend, and picked up a couple to try this.

We got the "Green Tea with Ginsing & Honey" flavor. I'm thinking of trying one with a little lemon (or maybe plain?), and the other with a bunch of ginger added in.

For the ginger one, I'd be looking at it more like using the iced tea as a base for a ginger wine.. any thoughts?

Good4TheCompany · 03-29-2011, 04:05 AM

I love the idea, and though I do occasionally drink Arizona teas still, I am opposed to using it for a brew. When it comes to my daily multiple cup consumption of tea, I go with quality loose leaf, loose leaf all the way!

Now if you wondering what a great resource for loose leaf tea is, it would be www.adagio.com. They usually have great deals, fast shipping, and quite a range of types/flavors to qualities.

So that being said, I plan to do a hard tea of a similar fashion, but I'm looking at using a more unique flavor of tea, once I get around to making it I'll post my recipe and tea flavor.

alex027 · 06-08-2011, 04:26 PM

About a month or so ago i started a one gallon batch of this recipe. The store that i bought the tea from didn't have the southern style sweet tea in stock. So i used two half gallon bottles of Snapple iced tea which has sugar as the sweetener.

The ferment started to slow down pretty good so when I went to check the gravity I sampled some. Hot damn it was good.

I soon realized that this one gallon i had was not going to last very long, so i headed back to the store to pick up more ingredients, this time for a six gallon batch. Again the store didn't have the southern style in stock. So i bought the Arizona iced tea with lemon flavour. Once i got it home and started the process i realized the main sweetener was high fructose corn syrup. Im pretty sure that the southern style has the same thing.

I am still new to this so i did some research and a lot of people on this forum seem to think that hfcs does not ferment well, time wise and taste wise.

Has anyone had any ill effects in thier brew with using this?

renshaw · 06-15-2011, 08:45 PM

12 tea bags,
2 blackcurrant tea bags
about a spoon full of "perfect steak" :P
and a clove.
about 600ish sugar

o.g. 1.070 for one gallon

It smelled lovely, of black current and spice (this is all what perfect stake is)
Fermenting now.

**snpr13** · 07-28-2011, 05:11 PM

tag

**MrJames** · 12-31-2011, 01:08 PM

Hey all, any updates to report on how your tea turned out??

**snpr13** · 01-05-2012, 01:48 AM

Actually what I did was use 3 gallons Arizona Sweet tea and 2 lbs. liquid corn sugar from LHBS and S05 yeast. Fermented for 2 weeks and added yeast killer and back sweetend with 1 can frozen lemonade concentrate. Turned out very well and drinkable although a bit bitter from lemon juice. Next time I would try using 1 can of frozen lemonade concenetrate to sweeten a 5 gal batch and I think it would be perfect. Goes down very smooth SG was a 1.065 I believe and it finished around a 1.01. I do not have info with me currently so I cannot remember exactly what the numbers were.

ashfatboy · 02-23-2012, 10:38 PM

How long does it take to ferment out this tea wine??

**snpr13** · 02-24-2012, 12:02 PM

After the initial 2 week ferment, once finished I added some potasium metabisulfate to kill any yeast and cold crashed in fridge for a day. I bottled and within a week or 2 in the bottle it was pretty good as I stated in previous post I would go with 5 gal of tea and add corn sugar to raise starting gravity a little higher. I see others saying they would prefer to use a higher grade tea but I am making this for the "girls" and they just like the sweet drink and nothing fancy.

ashfatboy · 02-24-2012, 02:01 PM

What was your start/finish gravity?what alcahol were you aiming for?i think if this tastes like ice tea I need to make a gallon ASAP hahah