One more hard tea experiment

Well folks, I figured it was about time I give this a shot. Taking advice from all of the other threads I have read on the subject, I am determined to make something good come out of this.

Here is what I did:
12oz LDME
8oz Corn Sugar
20 Lipton tea bags


I boiled the DME and Corn Sugar for 10 minutes to get dissolved and brought to rolling boil. (Full 1 gallon boil)
At flame out I added 20 lipton tea bags (about twice what we would usually use for 1 gallon of iced tea)
Let steep for 10 minutes and pull the bags out

Put the pot in an ice bath to bring temp down.

add yeast nutrient and aerate very well

Pour into 1 gallon cider jug and pitch 1 pkg Windsor yeast (cause thats what I had on hand)

I am hoping between the windsor yeast, the nutrient, and the extra tea, this should avoid many of the problems reported with previous batches posted here.

I took a taste of the "wort" when I took the gravity reading on my refractometer and it tasted pretty good - hopefully the yeast won't diminish the tea flavor and just eat through the maltiness of it.

Glad to report that fermentation kicked off in less than 1 hour. It is happily bubbling away on the counter. I will let it go there overnight then move it into the basement to cooler temps.

I hope this turns out well. Sounds like you covered all of the bases. I am very interested to hear how this turns out for you.

Well so far so good, looks like fermentation has reduced to a crawl. I will take a gravity reading tomorrow to check it out. I was down there for 30 minutes earlier and the airlock barely moved, maybe a mm.. maybe - but no bubbles.

Looks good, cloudy as all hell but I imagine it will settle out and clear up.. I will probably cold crash it in the kegerator after its completely done.

Brew Spook, how did this ever turn out?

BrewSpook: How did this come out?

I would think it would work better if you did this as a cold-brewed tea like a sun tea, by putting the tea bags in the secondary for a few hours.

Did this ever come to a result?

Sorry guys, I have just been slammed lately. It is still sitting on a shelf in the basement. I will rack it tonight and give a report.. Its a beautiful color and has cleared amazingly. Will try to take some pics with report.

Did you get it racked? How's it taste?

yeah!

any updates on this?

curious to hear about this, it sounds great

I hope it turns out well cause im also trying this recipe except i used strawberry tea bags

how do you bottle something like this the same as beer or different ?

Sorry for the lack of updating this. It turned out pretty good, not sure i will make it again, but it wasn't too bad. I might try a cleaner yeast if I were to do it again.

As far as bottling, I wouldn't add priming sugar, unless you want it carbonated of course. I would just purge my bottles with CO2 and fill/cap.

cool thanks thats same idea i thought too