"Chai" winter beer

[Fancy_Pants]

Hi guys, just a quick question for anyone who has played with the idea before. I am looking at doing a "Chai" spiced winter beer as my girlfriend and I have tried a couple of really good ones so far this year. I'm looking to do an english style brown ale with a strong caramel/toffee flavor and add cardamom to the boil. A local brewery does a "Chai" beer and only lists cardamom in the ingredients along with the normal ingredients. My question is how much should I use for a standard 5 gal batch? I'm thinking somewhere around 2 - 4 ounces. I understand it is a pretty strong spice and a little can go a long way, but not enough will just add an oddity to the flavor profile. Thanks in advance for your helpful suggestions.

 

[sieglere]

I've done a chai-ed porter using actual chai tea. First off, chai is inexpensive enough that it's a good way to go if you want that flavor (a plain, loose chai shouldn't be more than $5-10 for 2 oz). I would recommend 1-2 oz per 5 gallons of beer and secondary for 10 days. It goes real nice into a milk stout, though I'd like to hear about the camel brown turns out with chai.

As for using cardamom only, I'm not sure how it'll turn out. Are you using ground or whole?

 

[LLBeanJ]

I recently brewed a maple chai beer using a Scottish ale base recipe and I used chai tea bags. 10 tea bags were added to the boil with 10 min remaining. At the time of kegging I found the chai to be a bit muted. Wanting more chai flavor, I then soaked another 10 tea bags in 8 oz of spiced rum for about 4 or 5 days, after which I removed the tea bags from the rum and poured only 4 oz. of the chai flavored rum into the keg. The chai definitely came through after that (maybe a bit too much!), though the I couldn't detect the rum (and since I wanted some rum flavor, I then added another 4 oz. of straight rum to get me there). I think if I had to do it again, I'd still go with the 10 bags in the boil, but I'd perhaps decrease the tea bags to 5 for the rum soaked extract or use 10 bags as before, but add the extract to the keg in 1 oz. increments until I was happy with the flavor. All in all, though, the chai flavor is great and I think once it mellows just a bit, it'll be a very nice beer.

 

[sieglere]

10 min is too early for chai/tea additions. Think of it as a cup of tea, you wouldn't steep it for 10 min. I'd suggest flame out at the earliest, or preferably an infusion or "dry hop" it

 

[Fathand]

I made a Chai Brown several years ago long before I took any sort of notes so I can't recall the measurements but I added whole spice into the boil. I did not want to add tea flavor to my beer, just the spice.

I used green cardamom, whole cinnamon, clove and black peppercorn. It had a real nice flavor. Perhaps you could find a chai tea recipe and scale that up to 5 gallons.

Also a helpful hint go to an Indian Grocery for spices. They are great spices and usually cheaper.

 

[Fancy_Pants]

Thanks for the interesting ideas in your responses. I've had good success with whole spices sold by my local brew shop in the past so I'm thinking I'll stick with those. Although the idea of using a high end loose leaf tea from the local teavana is an interesting one, perhaps for a lighter summer beer. As it happens I live in a community heavily populated with middle eastern people, obtaining high quality spice shouldn't be a problem. I'll throw 2oz into the boil with the flavoring hops and see how that turns out. Perhaps add some to the fermenter later on if the flavor falls flat. I'll be brewing on Saturday and will post an update then about pre-fermented flavor profile.