green tea hefeweizen

Hey, I'm new to brewing but I want to try something interesting for my next batch since my first two batches turned out absolutely perfect.

I work at starbucks and I was drinking some of the concentrated tea we brew, some tazo zen. its a combination of green tea, lemongrass, and mint. anyways I was drinking it (its quite strong at 2x strength) and realized that it would probably lend a very good taste to wheatbeer.

so i looked it up on the internet and some small craft breweries have made some brews with tea to good review, as well as homebrewers. not necesarily wheats, but some lagers I believe.

so I have a few choices. throw the bags in the secondary, and hope they are sterile enough. or do a partial boil and add tea instead of water (seems easiest to me). or make concentrated tea and add that to the secondary. or some combination of those. any advice?

thanks

I'm thinking boil off some and put it in secondary; Do you have access to dry leaves/mix or just liquid? Never had tea at starbucks, so I don't how they do it (would help in your answer as far as suggesting what to do).

MoRoToRiUm said:

I'm thinking boil off some and put it in secondary; Do you have access to dry leaves/mix or just liquid? Never had tea at starbucks, so I don't how they do it (would help in your answer as far as suggesting what to do).

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its dry leaves, but you steep it for a really long time. when you actually make someone an iced tea, its half tea, half water, hence 2x strength.

Dogfish Head, always the adventurous type, has brewed a batch with black tea. I think it was a one time thing and I never tried it. From the website:

Ginger Peach Wheat

Availability: SOLD OUT

Release Date: 9/5/06

Ginger Peach Wheat

Why use just water? We brewed this beer with a batch of Ginger Peach Black tea. This tea was then blended with Wheat and Pilsner malts. The beer was then hopped exclusively with Sterling Hops. This beer has a wonderful peach aroma whereas the ginger is apparent in the flavor. 5 %ABV and 30 IBU's.

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I actually just made a green tea beer. Mines an ale though.
I was based of of a recipe that i found in a book. The guy originally made it with black tea. Mine didn't come out the way I wanted it to. I found that the tea loses its taste in the beer within 4 weeks of bottling it. Did come out to 10% abv