Brutus Brewer
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Being a fan of Chai tea, I have thought about brewing a Chai Stout. Any thoughts on how much Chai tea would be needed for a 5 gallon batch?
did you ever get around to trying this out? i'm very interested in know your experience if you did.Cap'n Jewbeard said:... Maybe a chai-spiced mead would be delicious in addition to your beer? I think I'm going to make that a priority for me.
Being a fan of Chai tea, I have thought about brewing a Chai Stout. Any thoughts on how much Chai tea would be needed for a 5 gallon batch?
I know it might be cheating, but couldn't you just use Tazo Chai Tea Concentrate? I really like that stuff and now I want to do a Chai beer too!
I'm just getting started in homebrewing, and this thread is fortuitous. My first brew is going to be a breakfast stout with some chai overtones. I make chai in the traditional stovetop manner about every day (I use cardamom so much I have a pepper mill full of it...great for fresh fruit, especially mango).
Thanks everyone for the insights. I'm hoping to convert the non-beer drinking members of my Indian family with this.
My brewday tomorrow is a Chai Brown Ale for the upcoming holiday season.
The recipe is verbatim from Radical Brewing.
I'll be making the basic Brown Ale recipe tomorrow, fermenting out and adding a chai mixture to taste at kegging, estimated two cups of strong chai tea.
As for the creamyness of chai, I was thinking this could be a really cool beer to serve on nitro! Unfortunately, that is (so far) beyond my means.
In this New Yorker article about (primarily) Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, he and his brewmaster are making a tea-based beer for the first time. Might give you some hints but even if it doesn't it is a great read. The tea comes up in the middle of the article somewhere...
Annals of Drinking: A Better Brew: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Update: Mosher made a mistake with this recipe. I used the same spices in the manner described in Radical Brewing and the spice tea was not nearly strong enough to flavor a full batch of beer. Subsequently I looked up a few authentic chai tea recipes and the amount Mosher recommends is barely enough to make two cups of chai tea. Like someone earlier mentioned, you need around 100 cardamom pods, not 18. The other ingredients were similarly off as well.
I am going to throw the spice tea I made today out, and try just amping up the volumes for all the spices, grinding in a coffee grinder, and doing a 20 minute boil rather than steeping. From what I've read, boiling seems to be the way to go. Would this create an astringent taste for any reason?
I agree that it can be a tricky dance to get the spice mixture right (especially if you decide to add cloves) but as for boiling: traditionally chai is boiled for a few minutes after the spices are added, so the astringency you extract from the spices will be normal. The only thing is you shouldn't add the cardamom until the end of the boil because it will burn and turn bitter. This is true of pretty much ever Indian recipe involving cardamom.
I wouldn't recommend grinding the spices to dust in a coffee/spice grinder. Chai spices are powerful, and you would want to avoid that instant coffee effect of garbage bitterness taste. If you want to use less overall then go ahead and grind, but the spices aren't too expensive and you have more control with whole or coarsely ground spices.
As a reference point, if I'm making a pot of chai (let's say four cups) I'd crush 1 clove for the whole pot with about 2 tablespoons of minced ginger, and crack 3-4 cardamom pods and crush those to throw in at the end (or two spins per cup of my cardamom filled pepper mill ). Cinnamon is a no-no in my house, as are other spices like nutmeg, but if you want to get festive with a lot of spices tread on the softside with these two.
Having said that, for a 5 gallon batch, to achieve my desired level of spice, I'd probably use candied/crystalized ginger and whole cardamom pods in a hot tea, dose a pint of a similar styled commercial beer to taste then scale it up just like adding a fruit flavoring, extract or liquor. You can probably get away with boiling the tea if you're not crusing the spices to dust, but I do like the sound of phil's french press approach.
Dude- Thats wayyyy more spice than I used and next time I make this I'll be cutting back.
I used loose, unground chai mix with no tea leaves, steeped in my french press, cooled the tea and added about 3/4s of it to the bottling bucket. Much more control over the flavor. You couldn't taste as you go if you add to the boil. Rely on your tastebuds!
So is there any consensus on what a good recipe would be?
Chai Beer (aka India Chai Ale)
- brian rezac
- ------------------------------------------
8 lbs. Munton & Fison light malt extract
1 lb. English crystal malt (55 L)
8 oz. Belgian Munich malt
4 oz. Belgian CaraPils malt
4 oz. Briess chocolate malt
4 oz. Briess roasted barley
2 oz. Cascade, 4.9% AA (70 min)
3/4 oz. Saaz, 3.0% AA (15 min)
1/2 oz. Saaz, 3.0% AA (2 min)
1 teaspoon Irish moss (15 min)
1 teaspoon Burton salts (optional)
Wyeast #1007 - German ale yeast
Naturally carbonate, bottle condition.
Spices
- ---------------
120 Cardamom pods, (cracked slightly - just enough to open the
pods)
11 teaspoons Cinnamon chips
11 teaspoons whole Coriander
5 1/2 teaspoons whole Cloves
5 1/2 teaspoons whole black Peppercorns
11 inches fresh, peeled, sliced Ginger root (or 5 teaspoons dried
ginger chips)
Adding Spices
- ---------------------
In a separate pot, boil all spices in approximately 1 quart of
water for 20 minutes. (You should have the spices boiling about
the same time as you start the wort boiling.)
After 20 minutes of a nice rolling boil, shut off heat, cover and
leave spices sit in water for another 20 minutes.
At 20 minutes left to the wort boil, add spice tea through a
strainer directly into wort.
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