Hard Ice Tea

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

mfp03001

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2009
Messages
53
Reaction score
0
Location
Connecticut
So recently I came up with the idea of trying to make some homemade hard ice tea. But I have not seen any threads on here about it, which was my first sign it might be a bad idea...

Basically my plan is to dissolve some sugar in water; boil it for a little while add some yeast and nutrient (not sure what kind yet) and let that ferment. Then rack it, heat it up, add some tea bags and let them steep, and maybe some honey or sugar to sweeten it. Then bottle it.

I just wanted to get some peoples options on this to see if this is a good idea or dumb/unsafe for some reason. Or just a waste of time and I should go buy vodka and add that to tea. I thought it might be interesting to try.

Thanks
 
The process in experiments like this is half the fun. If it were me I would try doing some vodka and sweetener of your choice in your tea first. Tea is kind of bitter by itself and with the perceived bitterness that alcohol will bring to the tea I think some unfermentable sugars will be necessary to help balance the bitterness. Don't forget to add some hops to your fermenting tea/sugar water if you decide to do it. Hops inhibit botulism spores from growing. And that's some more bitterness to fight. If I were to do this I would ferment the tea already made with the sugar in it. Possibly a lager so that the tea flavor isn't to covered up. Then when I serve/drink it I would back sweeten it if there was no carbonation. If you plan to carbonate it might take some practice to get the right amount of unfermentable sugars.
 
Well thanks for the input I would not have thought of the hops that's probably a good idea. I was not planning on making it carbonated so I could just sweeten it to taste afterward sounds like a good idea for at least the first batch. I think I am going to just try one gallon first to see how it goes, I'll probably do that pretty soon.
 
If you are doing an iced tea and you are going to sweeten it later then I would recommend a simple syrup or something along those lines. Regular sugar just won't dissolve, take it from a southern sweet tea addict that has had to live up north.
 
Basically my plan is to dissolve some sugar in water; boil it for a little while add some yeast and nutrient (not sure what kind yet) and let that ferment.

I would give some thought to starting with caramelized cane sugar and make a pot still and make rum.
 
Sounds like an interesting experiment. You may want to figure out the fermentation, and then back sweeten afterwards.



If you are doing an iced tea and you are going to sweeten it later then I would recommend a simple syrup or something along those lines. Regular sugar just won't dissolve, take it from a southern sweet tea addict that has had to live up north.

Same here brother, what you do is order your "Sweet Tea", when the waitress looks at you like you just spoke to her in Latin and then replies with the standard "I can bring you some sugar packets"; as calmly as you can ask for the unsweetened ice tea with no ice, a glass of ice, 10 packs of sugar and a cup of hot water. Mix the sugar in the hot water until dissolved and add to the tea to taste. Then add your ice.

Yeah it's anal, but sometimes I just want a damned sweet tea.
 
Oh I have heard of sweet tea before, I dated a girl who was originally from NC for like two years. Can't say I was ever fond of it though... I met the Blue agave syrup I never ehard of though I suppose that's what they make tequila out of.

Anyway I think I'll take the consensus and try back sweating it.
 
Being from NC myself, I took it for granted that you wanted to make a hard sweet tea. Hard to believe there's any other kind of tea.

We have a Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka down here, though I've yet to try it.
 
I think heating it up after you've fermented is going to be counter productive. Heat will drive off the alchol and you won't have "hard" iced tea any more. Cold steeping, or brew the tea before hand would be a better idea.. IMHO
 
We have a Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka down here, though I've yet to try it.

It's crap...my Aunt sent one up to me. I almost gagged.


As for Sweet Tea in general, I wish you would have kept that stuff down South. Everywhere I go now and ask for Tea I get the same response. "We have Regular and Sweet Tea" where regular is that sweetened Lipton crap.
 
I've been interested in this myself but what I was thinking was to brew up a large amount of tea bags in a small amount of water and then add them to primary. Top up the primary with a sugar/water mix. I was thinking a mix of honey and possible just cane sugar but I'm liking the idea of a sugar syrup more. Once fermentation is all done I'd take even more tea bags and do sort of a dry hop with them.
 
So I just went all out and went ahead a made 5 gallons of this yesterday since nothing else to do during the day, so it better come out well. I'll figure out the sweetening when the time comes. Anyway, here is what I did.

Brewed 03/17/10

Dissolved 5 pounds of sugar in 5 gallons of water.

Added juice and zest of 5 lemons no need to be wasteful (about 1 ¼ cups juice and ¼ cup zest). I always like lemon in my ice tea.

Boil

30 min. 1 oz cascade hops AA% = ? (Went to a store I had never been today before they didn’t have the AA on any hops…) I picked cascade because I feel they are the most citrusy.

15 min. 1 oz. of yeast nurturance and 8 oz. of English black tea (tea was loose leaf that’s about 50 to 60 tea bags).

Was cooled rather slowly (about 2.5 hours) with tea leaves still in it as an additional steeping period. Was thinking I might be a little short on tea so I would let is steep extra long, and that I didn’t need a cold break.

Poured into fermenter 94% of the leaves were left behind.

Didn’t get too much final product (lots had to be left behind with the leaves) so I added boiled water bring the volume up to 4.5 gallons. The leaves expand a lot and absorbed a lot of water which is why I didn’t use a mesh bag. However thinking about it now if I was to do it again I would probably use a lot few mesh bags and just not pack them full leaving plenty of room for expansion.

OG 1.037 (lower than expected must have lost a lot of sugar with the leaves.)

Pinched 1 tablespoon of rehydrated Alltech distillers yeast. I had this yeast for a while now was excited and thought I could do all cool stuff when I bought it but never did anything with it…

Here are a few pictures hopefully (I never uploaded pictures before). They are just of it fermenting I could not find my camera before turned out to be in my car.

Four hours in to fermentation. Kreusen is not very big but getting a bubble ever 1 second I have in a blow off tube you can’t see.

24547_745675203841_9023842_43888922_5332615_n.jpg


Twelve hours in to fermentation. Kreusen is even smaller but getting a bubble ever 3 seconds still.

24547_745674979291_9023842_43888917_4973704_n.jpg


Its been about 23 hours now since I made it and still fermenting fast about a bubble ever 4 seconds. Too lazy to take another picture right now.
 
Did you taste the sample you used to check your OG? How was it at this stage?

Kris
 
It was rather sweet could detect the lemon but not that much I think it would have come through better if it was not so sweet. I feel it was hard to judge the tea strength due to the sweetness. I didn't have much just like a sip or two.
 
Are you planning on possibly "dry hopping" more tea and some more lemons in the secondary?

Kris
 
I think a dry hop or a concentrated french press tea would work great with this after it's done fermenting
 
I made a batch of hard tea and it was good enough I have a 5 gallon batch going right now. Keep in mind this is a tea "wine" and made just like making a wine and we drank it unsweetened, but I bet it would be killer sweetened up some or even added to a hard lemonade.... here are the notes on the batch brewing right now.
SPICED TEA WINE PART TWO 12-30-09

STEEPED 60 ORANGE SPICED TEA BAGS IN APPROXIMATELY 2 GALLONS OF WATER...BROUGHT TO A BOIL THEN LET SET FOR 15 MINUTES....RINSED AND "TEA BAGGED" THE BAGS AND ADDED 4 POUNDS OF SUGAR TO THE MUST. HEATED AND STIRRED UNTIL DISSOLVED. TOPPED UP WITH COLD WATER TO 5 GALLONS. WAITED UNTIL TEMP DROPPED A BIT THEN ADDED 1 PACKET OF RED STAR PASTEUR CHAMPAGNE YEAST.
ADDED 4 MORE POUNDS OF SUGAR ON 1-3-10 BUBBLING AWAY SO COMBINED I SHOULD HAVE A GRAVITY OF 1.072 I WILL ADD 1 POUND THEN ANOTHER LATER TO TRY TO BOOST THE ABV.

ADDED 2 POUNDS SUGAR ON 2-11-10 would make the OG 1.090...slow airlock activity..

checked on it visually on 2-27-10....very little airlock activity but visible signs of fermentation ( bubbles) in the carboy. Will check gravity soon.
 
Are you planning on possibly "dry hopping" more tea and some more lemons in the secondary?

Kris

I am not sure when its all done fermenting I'll probably take a sample sweeten it up a little and decide if it needs more tea or lemon flavor and if it does add such in a secondary is defiantly a good idea or option at least.
 
Well I just thought I would give an update on this. Visual active fermentation has been up for about 2 days now. So I took a gravity reading tonight, and got 0.999 (about 5.0% ABV). I also wanted to try my sample obviously so I did and it was very bitter so I sweetened it up putting in a little honey and dissolving it in the microwave for a few seconds then I put it in the freezer to cool. And well it doesn't taste like tea. You can defiantly taste the lemon in it and I also think it taste rather similar to hard cider. It certainly does not taste undrinkable the best description I can come up with is hard cider with lemon. I hope that’s not a bad sign of something. I know I have read before that some people say you can make beer taste cidery if you carbonate it with cane sugar. So I think what my next step is going to be is to transfer it into jugs as secondaries (I have 3 gallon and 7 half gallon ones). I’ll leave one alone then the others I’ll try added stuff too like “dry hoping “with different increments of tea. Perhaps I’ll try to add some honey to one if I can get it dissolved in it. Does anyone else have any suggestions of other things to add?
 
Well if anyone is still interested I thought I might as well share my final results of this experiment. Just took my own notes and added to them for this post.

3/25/10

For easy and time sake I transferred all the tea into an ale pail. Instead of separated secondary jugs with different things added.

Transferred to secondary off yeast and leaves.

Got about 4 1/8 gallons at G:0.999

In a pot I boiled one gallon water with the zest and juice of two more lemons and one pound of sugar. I let this cool about 15 degrees and then added 8 oz. of loose leaf English tea in a mesh bag. (not suppose to add tea at boiling point it "burns" it apparently even though I did that with my initial boil.) This all sat for about another 20 min.

Mixed this into the secondary (including tea) and check the gravity and got G: 1.007; new total volume about 5.5 gallons. Left the mesh bag with all the tea in for a sort of “dry hopping”…

Sprinkled on top and then swirled in one teaspoon of non-rehydrated distillers yeast and swirled it in. Don’t worry temperature was at about 79 degrees at this time.

Assume the new OG by 1.037 + (1.007-.999) = 1.045. That can’t be right.

So I did this added 1 gallon at 1.046 to about 4.12 gallons at 1.037. (1 x 1.046 + 4.12 x 1.037) = 1.039 New OG should be 1.039… (Used this number)

4/7/10

Bottled into jugs (3 gallon jugs and 4 half gallon) got a little over 5 gallons of final product.

FG: 1.001 for an ABV of 5.0%

To one gallon I added 12 oz. (by weight) of table sugar.

To one gallon I added 12 oz. (by weight) of honey.

These amounts of sweeteners shall provide some sweetening but not much.
Placed all the jugs in the freezer to kill the any residual yeast and prevent anymore fermentation. Not sure how long this will take or it they could freeze at only 5.0% ABV. Have to monitor closely really don’t want broken jugs.

Current product taste much more like tea than did when went into secondary. However If I was to do it again I still think it could use more tea flavor still. Lemon is currently the strongest flavor. Its more liek a lemonade ice tea. What I have is certainly good and drinkable I am sure it will be in the jugs for a while perhaps the taste will change even more. The cidery flavor that I detected earlier is almost completely gone. If I was to make it again I think the one change I would make is “dry hopping” even more tea in the secondary. I might even just add all the tea then. I would increase it by another 4 to 8 oz. for a total of 20 to 24 ounces of tea. Depending on what type of tea you use this can get rather expensive. If you are using tea bags which I think I would in the future (they would be cheaper usually and easier than the loose leaf I used. That’s about 3 boxes worth for 5 gallons. It should also be noted that I used English breakfast tea with is a strong tea relative to most. So using another kind you may want to or need to add even a forth box, or let it sit I the secondary even longer though I don’t really know if letting it sit longer than 13 days would extract more tea flavor. I think that the level of lemon flavor that I currently have is good however to try to get more tea flavor in the future I might reduce it by a lemon or two instead of having to add more tea. (I used 7 lemons zest and juice overall.) I estimated the total cost of all this at $35.
 
One last possible useful piece of info it took 5 hours for the ice tea at 5% ABV to start freezing in my freezer which is at 12 degrees F.
 
i keep hearing 'killing the yeast' and 'unfermentable sugars' i kno this could be concidered under the unfermentable sugars but bein more specific...splenda? possibility? i kno its the most suggested thing for backsweetening apfelwein just a thought
 
Yeah, I have been sweetening it with with that powdered ice tea mix stuff when I drink it. I find that to be the best since its also adds more tea flavor which mine could use.
 
Being from Louisiana sweet tea is one step below religion around here. I definitely want to try making some very soon. I would definitely hit the spot on a steamy summer afternoon.

I'll post my own results once I get underway.
 
Back
Top