Request for comments: Mint Tea Hybrid

I'm thinking Mint Tea Hybrid Pale Ale.

Sweet Tea is the "big craze" right now - but that's a load of crap because I've been a fan of sweet tea for some time. I have a "house iced tea" that I make using Bigelow Plantation Mint tea that is phenomenal. I'm trying to design a beer to drink late this summer. Hence, this hybrid. Target 4.6%ABV. Smooth, easy drinker.

I'm thinking of something like this:

8 bags (single cup size) Bigelow Plantation Mint steeped in the strike water while heating

9lbs Pale 2-Row
.5 lbs Cara 40L
.25 lbs Aromatic malt

75 minute mash, target 151F for balance between mouthfeel and fermentables.

75 minute boil
.66oz Perle at 60 mins
.33oz Perle at 20 mins

Very lightly hopped, hopefully some of the "minty" taste and aroma that I've heard Perle can contribute.

Ferment it with US-05 or maybe Cry Havoc. 2 week primary, keg and force carb. Perhaps kill yeast with Campden and sweeten moderately with dextrose to give it that authentic sweet tea taste.

Am I crazy? Comments please!!!!!

-My other idea includes incorporating Lemon and Lime zest into the above, and using small amt of Sorachi Ace instead of Perle. Ideas on that???
-My other other idea includes omitting the .33oz addition, and instead making a Hop Tea with the 1/3 oz Perle. With the hop tea, I will steep 2 more bags of Plantation Mint to up the tea presence.

I wonder if "dry-teaing" this as well/instead will add some bright tea notes? I'm afraid after boiling the tea for that long you're going to get a lot of bitterness, and you're going to lose the tea flavor.

What about just adding fresh mint leaves to the primary?

I was basing this off of RoaringBrewer and Brewtopia's approach to their respective Peach-Ginger beers (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=59496 ) .... one of them steeped the tea at flame-out, the other both at flame-out and into the steeping water... but that was on an extract batch.

That's why I was kind of thinking of incorporating the tea into the "hop tea" addition for the secondary fermenter (in "other other idea" section).

Think the base recipe looks good? Comments on hops?

Should be mentioned: This beer may or may not be for a competition, and I want it to be HIGHLY accessible to all beer drinkers including snobs, AND very marketable from a corporate standpoint hopefully!!

I would try adding the Tea at Flame out. If you steep it too long it will dominate the Malt and become the primary flavor

I, too, am in the "steep the tea at flameout" club. Taste the wort often to make sure you don't overdo it.

Being a noob with beer, but decent with tea would say steep it during flame out, or when you go to chill it... about 5 minutes in hot water is all you need for tea bags to get the maximum flavor with as little of the nasty bitter tastes. Same for other dark teas (loose or bagged).

+1 for watch your steep time. After 3-5 min bitter tannins are extracted and thats a no good. For more flavor, use more tea but don't increase the steeping time.

Not sure but I would think that at flame out bring temp down to about 180 then steep for 3-5 minutes. That should add plenty of tea flavor without the bitterness.

Should be noted that I don't own an IC, just a counter-flow. So ...1) Tasting will be difficult. I'm pretty much going to have to steep it and wing it. ...2) Can't bring the temp down to 180 before putting the tea in.

It sounds like I need an IC to attempt this recipe, do you agree?

Still no comments on the rest of the recipe?????

@budbo, I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here but bear with me..... is it a bad thing if the Mint Iced Tea flavor overpowers the malt backbone of the beer??? (Again, thinking from a commercial marketability / general-public contest winning standpoint) After all I'm envisioning this truly as a hybrid beer, not as a flavored American Pale Ale.

My other idea was to brew 2.5gal of simple 8% strong beer, lightly hopped, and add 2.5 gal of strong mint iced tea, blend in a corny and force carb.

Could that be the more "foolproof" method since I only have a counter-flow chiller?

I'd can't offer any advice, but am definately interested in your results. I'd like to do something with mint, in my mind I'm picturing something where the mint is there, but not overpowering.

Good Luck.

Originally posted by chriso
It sounds like I need an IC to attempt this recipe, do you agree?

Click to expand...

No, you don't need to chill prior to steeping. Think about it, when you make tea, you bring the water to a boil in your tea kettle, remove from heat and pour directly into a mug and steep. This is the same principle.

I stated in Roaring Brewer's thread, that I acheived great results in my Blackberry Sage Porter from adding the tea at flameout, steep 5 minutes and remove. There were no harsh tannins from the black tea extracted and the blackberry came through nicely in the finished product.

Good luck with this beer. Sounds like it could be a great summer quencher.

Going to try this this coming Saturday (hoping I don't get migraines again!!).... I'm doubling the tea at least. I noticed others were in the 2-3oz range, and a box full of individual teabags is <2 oz. Good thing I bought two boxes!

Anyone ever find Perle to be "minty"? It's one of those descriptors I've only seen on web pages, I've never read anyone around here talk much about Perle - or at least much GOOD about Perle...

Think Lemon/Lime peels/zest would be too much or too complex?

OK just started my 75 minute boil!!!!

The whole box (20 bags) is only 1.18 oz of tea. I've unwrapped 10 of the 20 bags..... Should I steep 1/2 the box, and then make a "tea tea" at kegging time to ramp up the flavor if necessary?

Should I steep the WHOLE box and use my spare box to make "tea tea"?

I'm planning on adding a "hop tea" of .33oz Perle at kegging anyways, so making the "tea tea" could be the same step as this.

Update on this: I still need to build a pickup tube for my keggle.... because of this, I wound up with only 4 gal in the bucket and over 1 gal stuck in my keggle.... so I racked all the remaining wort, trub and all, into the fermenter. Netted 5.75gal volume by doing this.

Pitched US-05, and forgot about it. I meant to check it Thursday morning, and forgot. I meant to check it Thursday night, and forgot. I meant to check it last night, but got drunk. So I finally checked it today, and it had blown its lid sometime in the past 2 days. WHOOPS.

Luckily I keep my fermenters in a closed cabinet... so the amount of fresh-air that it would receive is minimal.... It doesn't look/smell like it's picked up an infection, so I just RDW'ed, and cleaned out the yeast-packed airlock, replaced the water, and sealed it back up.

Anywho, time to heat the strike water for my Funtown Pale Ale. More later as this beer progresses.

I made a hop tea of .33 oz Perle, and a **** ton more tea bags. Steeped them in 1 Qt of 185*F water, and steeped it looong. Overnight, in fact. Then, I poured the liquid in and discarded the sludge. (I did this about 7/6/08 I think)

Then I left it in primary for another 4 or 5 days... opened the lid and found a film had formed over my beer. But it didn't look like a pellicle, just a film. I figured it could be oils from the mint leaves in the tea, or weird compounds from letting the hop tea sit overnight. I RDW'ed and had a couple HB's. Since I can't afford to lose this batch, I racked the stinker into a corny and sealed it up.

I took a taste while racking. The aroma is pure ass. But I'll be damned if it doesn't actually taste like a nice spearmint pale ale. Huh. Who'da thunk it.

So now I need to really cover up the assroma, and I think it should be real mint leaves that I do it with.

*How should I sanitize fresh mint leaves before putting them into a corny? I'm thinking take a casserole dish. Dice my mint leaves into ~1/2" x 1/2" squares. Layer them as flat as I can in the casserole dish. Spray thoroughly with Star San, let sit 30 seconds, then pour the leaves and SS into a sanitized strainer. Take the resulting leaves, put them into a sanitized hop bag, and plunk it into the keg. Does that sound like a good process?

Should I sanitize the leaves first, whole, and then cut them into squares with a sanitized knife? That way the StarSan doesn't try to absorb too many mint oils?

I probably need to BMBF some bottles about a week from today, so I need to put the keg into the fridge tonight to start carbonating it. I figure I'll dunk the mint in while I'm moving it.

So there ya have it, the past 2 months of progress. Comments on what to do to it tonight?

I'd say toss your mint leaves in a bit of water, boil for a minute to sanitize, bruise mint leaves to extract some of the flavor, and pour it into the keg as it cools.

Mmm, ass aroma...

When I made 4 gallon batches of mint tea from fresh mint, I also thought the aroma was bad, but the flavor was fine and when served on ice the aroma wasn't a big problem.

Applying this to your problem, I would not mess with adding more mint to cover up bad aroma, the more green stuff you put in your beer the more vegetal I think it will get. I would either, gasp!, drink it from the bottle (no aroma problems, I do this with a drinkable but stinky beer I have) or serve it fairly cold or both. I think the mint flavor will still come through, especially since a lot of the flavor hits you after you swallow.

This is way up in the older posts in this thread, but one of the qualifications for this brew is:

Should be mentioned: This beer may or may not be for a competition, and I want it to be HIGHLY accessible to all beer drinkers including snobs, AND very marketable from a corporate standpoint hopefully!!

Click to expand...

That's the only reason I'm trying to address the aroma. I agree with you, svraines, trying to address the aroma could inadvertently make it worse. I'll try to be careful. Maybe I'll buy some fresh mint leaves and make a tea with them, just to test it out myself. I should also pull a sample of the beer as-is, now that it's conditioned in the keg for a couple weeks. Perhaps the aroma issue went/is going away.

All right, so it's been on the gas for about 5 days now. It's been kegged for about 2 1/2 weeks total at this point.

Carb level isn't bad, but it's not there yet, it stays on gas for at least another week before bottling a couple turn-in bottles.

Aroma is nondescript. Bready. I might've left too many unfermentables.. I wonder if I mashed even longer/lower it might help? A bit of grassiness... A lot like my bag of Perle smells.

Appearance is really nice. Clear, very pale. Like, Miller High Life pale. Pretty clear, too. None of my beers are read-through-it clear, but this is still nice and close.

Flavor is... interesting. it's definitely still a pale ale underneath. Bit of hoppy bitterness, bit of malty bread backbone. But the mint really shines through, IMO. Too bad I just gave SWMBO a taste and she thought it was Apfelwein.

Not bad, really. I like Perle hops, I'm glad I had a chance to try them. Definitely interesting.

I'm still debating opening the keg and throwing in a bunch of fresh mint, though.

OK, here's the update!

First, the competition. I got last place. My score was 12/50. I am moving on, and just doing my best not to dwell on this. I have not yet seen my score sheet, so until I do, I am just operating under the assumption that they just "didn't get it" because this beer does not have any major technical flaws. Moving on.

Second, the actual reception by actual people. Since I no longer am required to save this keg to serve it at the event, I took it with me to our local homebrew club picnic last night! I took it with me nice and cold, right out of my kegerator, where it's been sitting on 12psi since I put it in back in July. Hooked it up to Steve's cold box (I was bestowed the honor of the White Cue-Ball tap handle!) and served nice and chilly. The consensus of the beerheads is "Not bad at all! Surprisingly refreshing!". Everyone made it clear that it is not a beer they'd usually think of having on tap - but that the flavor more than makes up for the fact that it is, indeed, fizzy light and yellow. The real winner here, though, were the spouses of the brewers! I had at least a couple of nice gals that won't usually touch beer, even commercial stuff, and they loved it. They thought it was a very nice departure from the "normal" school of thought, and again, very refreshing, and quenching.

The mint really came out once it reached full carbonation. The aroma is no longer nondescript, it's just soft and herbal and minty. The flavor is well-rounded, not too heavy, not too bready, just light and refreshing and minty. The clarity took a huge jump, too, with the extra time in the cooler. It's easily the clearest beer I've ever made.

So the net result? Well, the keg's a little over 1/2 gone after being on tap for about 3 hours. Not too bad at all! I can finish the last 2 gallons fairly easy. I'm glad that, even if the judges loathed it, that my peers didn't!.

Keg kicked over a week ago, by the way. May it RIP.

I'll be doing something similar to this again. Probably combination of tea and real mint leaves for the rounded mint flavor.