Beer with black tea?

[rhys333]

I had the crazy idea of brewing a batch of beer with some ordinary black tea. I like the sound of Boston Tea ESB... or maybe Porter.

Has anybody tried brewing with black tea... Good/bad?

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[tbskinner]

I just made up a batch this weekend. Its gluten free so probably not something you want, but I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

[rhys333]

I just made up a batch this weekend. Its gluten free so probably not something you want, but I'll let you know how it turns out.

Mine would definately be barley based, but I'm interested to see your gluten free recipe if you'd like to share

 

[rhys333]

....just noticed your link thanks

 

[tbskinner]

If you where wondering, I thought earthy spicy tones in the hops to complement the tea. Also I think I had seen a chi tea beer on here a wile back, but I dont think they used tea at all in there beer.

 

[rhys333]

I was thinking something relatively dry (corn syrup addition) and slightly bitter to build on the black tea flavor. If i brew an ESB, do you think some earthy english hops, or american equivalent could work? Also, wondering what woukd be the best way to add the tea. I could dry hop a few teabags or maybe bottle prime with a steeped tea mixture.

 

[DrCarterM]

I dId this with light dme and earl grey. The end result was very sour and basicaly undrinkable. If I did it agaon I would add some sort of dark grains and hops to improve flavor and preservation. I can dig up my notes on the original brew if somone wants to see. Id like to revisit it one day.

 

[FatDragon]

One of the biggest questions is how do you get the tea in the beer? I'm very interested in putting tea into beer myself, but haven't been able to do much experimentation yet; my first attempt - a ~30 IBU pale ale with some biscuit, some C60, and aged pu-er tea added either pre-primary (cold-steeped), post-primary (cold-steeped), or post-primary (dry hopped) in three different splits - demonstrated no noticeable tea flavor against the control batch with no tea.

My next attempt is going to be light in color, low in alcohol, and sub-15 IBUs, with a greater amount of tea. If I use pu-er again I'll probably do a 20 minute whirlpool addition since it likes to be brewed near boiling temperatures, while green tea would probably go into the mash.

There are a couple threads floating around about "arnold palmer" beers - an easy-drinking beer with black tea, lemon, and a hint of sweetness. You might want to look those and other tea beer threads up here to see the best methods for getting tea flavor into beer.

 

[rhys333]

I dId this with light dme and earl grey. The end result was very sour and basicaly undrinkable. If I did it agaon I would add some sort of dark grains and hops to improve flavor and preservation. I can dig up my notes on the original brew if somone wants to see. Id like to revisit it one day.

What did you do exactly... boil the tea with dme? Maybe an idea would be to do a top up with cooled, steeped tea post boil but before fermentation. Wonder if primary fermentation could kill the tea flavor though...

 

[rhys333]

One of the biggest questions is how do you get the tea in the beer? I'm very interested in putting tea into beer myself, but haven't been able to do much experimentation yet; my first attempt - a ~30 IBU pale ale with some biscuit, some C60, and aged pu-er tea added either pre-primary (cold-steeped), post-primary (cold-steeped), or post-primary (dry hopped) in three different splits - demonstrated no noticeable tea flavor against the control batch with no tea.

My next attempt is going to be light in color, low in alcohol, and sub-15 IBUs, with a greater amount of tea. If I use pu-er again I'll probably do a 20 minute whirlpool addition since it likes to be brewed near boiling temperatures, while green tea would probably go into the mash.

There are a couple threads floating around about "arnold palmer" beers - an easy-drinking beer with black tea, lemon, and a hint of sweetness. You might want to look those and other tea beer threads up here to see the best methods for getting tea flavor into beer.

Would it be worth trying a hot steep instead of cold? I wonder if that would bring out more tea flavor. Thanks for the Palmer leads btw. Will check...

 

[FatDragon]

Would it be worth trying a hot steep instead of cold? I wonder if that would bring out more tea flavor. Thanks for the Palmer leads btw. Will check...

Coffee cold-brews beautifully - steep overnight and you can make a potent and smooth cup of coffee. I cold-steeped pu-er tea for a week and it seemed about as strong as if I had hot-steeped it for about forty seconds.

If you're going to steep the tea separately from the wort and add it as an adjunct (preferably post-primary), hot-steeping at the proper temperature for your particular tea seems like a good plan. I would steep for an extra-long time and use a high ratio of tea to water in order to get as much tea flavor into the water as possible, maybe even bag up the tea leaves or bags and toss them into the fermenter for a secondary cold-steep in the beer, ala dry-hopping with used tea leaves.

I'll be performing my own experiments with this myself, but it might be a while.

 

[DrCarterM]

What did you do exactly... boil the tea with dme? Maybe an idea would be to do a top up with cooled, steeped tea post boil but before fermentation. Wonder if primary fermentation could kill the tea flavor though...

I did, I boiled the tea with my DME. I had enough tea to brew 5 gallons... teaspoon by teaspoon. It was expensive, especially since I went to Tea-vana. Hind sight I don't think it was the best idea. When you steep or boil tea you are extracting flavors, the hot temperature speeds up this process and the longer and hotter your temperature the more likely you are to extract unwanted tannin- the really bitter stuff. A little tannin is good, but too much and blerch. That is what I was hoping for though, since I had no hops.

If I did it all over again I would not use tea as a primary flavor (I would add grains and hops) and I would do one of two things - cold steep the tea in water to create a concentrate or add it directly in a hops bag - both of which I would do in the secondary. I am undecided at this point which way I'll actualy go for the future batch, but I am leaning towards the hops bag method.

 

[rhys333]

I think what i'm going to hot steep (not boil) regular tea bags, maybe 5 or 6 of them, and use it with priming sugar for bottling. I'm hoping it'll give noticable tea flavor without getting too tanic

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[FatDragon]

I think what i'm going to hot steep (not boil) regular tea bags, maybe 5 or 6 of them, and use it with priming sugar for bottling. I'm hoping it'll give noticable tea flavor without getting too tanic

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How big is your batch? The Arnold Palmer beer that I read about used an entire box (not sure how many bags in the box, but certainly more than 5 or 6) of Lipton tea bags. A guy who showed up late in that thread, who works at a tea shop, suggested 3 oz. of Darjeeling, steeped 4 minutes at 200 degrees, and further suggested that it's probably better to overdo it than to underdo it.

 

[DrCarterM]

So what I did....
5gal Crystal Springs Bottled water (office cooler type)
6# light DME
6oz Loose leaf Eral Grey Creme tea (~60 tsp)
0.5 oz Lavander,fresh (yeah it is alot)
3.7oz confectioners sugar
1oz stevia


Boiledwater 15 min, added mqlt, sugar, and stevia. Brought to 200deg F. Added.0.2oz lavander and all of tea. Shut off heat, let steep and cool for 1.5hr. Put in primary, pitched yeast. OG 1.06.

Moved to secondary 11 days later, SG 1.015. Bottled 30 days later (41 days from brew - unexpected TDY). Batch primed with 4.5 oz sugar in the raw. SG unchanged at bottling.


What I would do differently....

1. More tea. You use 1 tsp of tea pr 8 oz water when making a cup, Id stick to this topreserve the delicate flavors.
2. Add specilty grains. I did not get the body I wanted from just tea.
3. Add hops. Even if it is just a little. The tea offered no preservation.
4. Do your experement batch with cheaper teas.... nuff said there lol.

I relied.on the tea to be both the flavor and the preservative. This was asking for failure, think a hops and hot water tea.... blerch.

 

[wingedcoyote]

Denny posted a few years ago about a Yerba Mate beer that sounded pretty good -- Mate is different from black tea but I think is normally steeped pretty similarly, so his methods might work.

 

[tbskinner]

I wouldn't leave the tea bag in anything for more than a few hours. You start to get off flavors from the tea leaves.

 

[Osedax]

I just used white tea in a batch last weekend. I used 40 tea bags (10 gallon batch) steeped at 170F for 10 minutes. I just whirlpooled till I hit 170 and then added the bags.

The beer is young and I also used juniper, seeds of paradise, and grapefruit peel. It seems like the tea provided a sort of "soft" fruitiness. Too early to judge but, it seems like a solid process.

 

[Osedax]

Also, tbskinner; What are we doing outside the gluten free section? The others shun us and throw rocks.

 

[rhys333]

How big is your batch? The Arnold Palmer beer that I read about used an entire box (not sure how many bags in the box, but certainly more than 5 or 6) of Lipton tea bags. A guy who showed up late in that thread, who works at a tea shop, suggested 3 oz. of Darjeeling, steeped 4 minutes at 200 degrees, and further suggested that it's probably better to overdo it than to underdo it.

I think i'll play safe at 2 or 3 gallon batch size due to a high likelihood of epic failure. I'm still thinking about basing this on an ESB, so might go on the dry side with an earthy flavor/aroma to match the black tea.

Here's a quick recipe i put together, quantities listed in percentages rather than deal with volume change and IMP/metric.

83.7% 2-Row (don't have MO so, 2-Row it is)
5.2% Carapils
5.2% C60
1.7% UK Chocolate
4.2% Invert sugar - Lyle's Golden Syrup (for dryness)
Kent Goldings @ 60 to 26 IBU
Willamette @ 10 to 7 IBU
black tea teabags @ FO - qty: 2 per qt. final volume (more/less?). 10 min post boil steep before chilling.

I'm still thinking it might be best to steep the tea separately in hot water rather than dumping in the high gravity wort... probably better for infusion. Only problem i see here is I'd have to reduce boil volume a significant amount and do top-up in the fermenter.

All thoughts/suggestions welcome!

 

[rhys333]

Just thought I'd revisit this old thread and see if anyone tried brewing a black tea beer. Unfortunately, I haven't tried yet, but I'll try an experimental batch sometime soon. Still considering when to add the black tea for best results:
1) Post-boil before cooling - tea prefers straight water. Extraction could be poor, and fermentation may destroy flavors
2) Higher gravity partial boil with tea solution top-up in fermentor - good extraction, but fermentation may still destroy flavor
3) Post-fermentation tea solution top-up - gets around issues mentioned above
4) " dry hop" tea bags - infection risk. Not considering this really.

I might test to see if fermentation affects tea flavor... brew a 1L batch of strong tea, sweeten with sugar or DME, ferment and taste the results. If it turns out okay, option #2 might be the way to go then. Any thoughts, or better yet, results from your own trials greatly appreciated.

 

[rhys333]

Alright, so i went ahead with option #2 above. 1L of 1.050 wort, with DME and a dash of hops. I'll get one bottle out of this, and sample whats left at bottling time. If it turns out nasty, i'll try option #3 for kicks.

 

[rhys333]

Here she be:

 

[Mindsculptor]

Honestly, if I were going to do this I'd treat the tea like specialty grains in an extract recipe. Do a pre-boil steep (1.25 ounces of loose tea per five gallons of water) at 190 degrees F for however long you would normally steep a cup of tea and then proceed as normal. A muslin grain bag is probably advisable.

 

[rhys333]

Honestly, if I were going to do this I'd treat the tea like specialty grains in an extract recipe. Do a pre-boil steep (1.25 ounces of loose tea per five gallons of water) at 190 degrees F for however long you would normally steep a cup of tea and then proceed as normal. A muslin grain bag is probably advisable.

I might try that, but I've always understood you never boil tea. Granted, this rule assumes the leaves are in the water at the time, but I'm thinking same applies to the tea liquid. Could be wrong... it almost happened to me once in 1987

 

[Mindsculptor]

No, the reason you don't boil tea is that temps higher than 190 start to extract really harsh and bitter tannins from the leaves. Once the leaves are out, all you would be doing is concentrating the flavors. Of course, the rule of **** in, **** out applies here; if you're going to use Lipton's for this you might as well not bother.

BierMuncher's Black Pearl Porter is, I think, an ideal recipe to create a chai beer. I even advanced the idea with him and he thought it would be interesting.

 

[rhys333]

Great, have you tried this out yourself yet? Curious how the tea flavor comes through, particularly if you boiled it as described.

 

[scarekrow]

Just noticed this thread. A couple years ago saw a local brewery that made a brew without hops that was dry hopped with black tea. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it then but checking their website they still make it. http://gilgameshbrewing.com/beers.

Its called Mamba. Hope this helps.

 

[Mindsculptor]

Great, have you tried this out yourself yet? Curious how the tea flavor comes through, particularly if you boiled it as described.

I haven't, just brew a Belgian strong today. I want to do a porter next, so it might as well be Black Pearl in the name of Science!