Coca tea beer

[bovineblitz]

Anyone made beer with tea in general?

I have about 80 bags of coca tea and was thinking it'd be a great experiment to try and come up with a brew incorporating coca tea (yes coca is the plant cocaine is extracted from but coca in tea form is legal and mild).

I know this exists:

No idea what the recipe is like.

Coca is very bitter, when I drink the tea I add honey and a dash of milk, and I usually drink tea unsweetened. Coca is used in fairly high amounts in Red Bull Cola and it's supposed to still be used to flavor Coca Cola.

Typically coca-colas are flavored with spices like this:
galangal, vanilla, mustard seed, lime, kola nut, cocoa, liquorice, cinnamon, lemon, ginger, coca leaf, orange, corn mint, pine, cardamom, mace, clove

As far as a recipe goes, I'm not really sure where to begin. I'd want to keep it relatively light, probably go with 6 pounds of pale malt and 1/2 pound of 40L crystal... maybe a little corn sugar to lighten the body. For the spices, I'd want to use a couple but keep it simple. Perhaps... a dash of vanilla extract, fresh ginger, and orange peel with 1/2 pound of lactose for a bit of sweetness?

I thought I'd add 15 tea bags post boil at the appropriate temp, right before cooling.

Any input would be wonderful!

 

[Forestgrover]

Did you ever brew this? Very intrigued. When I make sun tea I use that many bags for probably 2 gallons of water so with your malt and other flavors I would imagine that you would need to increase the number of tea bags considerably for a pronounced flavor.

I suppose you could use them like you were dry hopping something too.

 

[bovineblitz]

I actually did a test batch on 12/20, it's still in primary 1gal bottles. 1gal got 20 coca tea bags steeped in 180 degree wort for 20min (normally you use 2 bags per 4-6oz), the other gal got 2.7oz of yerba mate (both regular and roasted) soaked in 180 degree water for 3min then added to the gallon bottle.

Gravity is something like 1.055 (didn't take a reading), dry extract and a little crystal 60... used .2 nugget at 10min and .2 at 0min, I thought it might work with the coca. I'm basically relying on the teas for bitterness.

I'll bottle early next week. I have no idea if it'll be any good but I was thinking about making a beer with both stimulants. I think the roasted yerba mate might make the mate gallon taste terrible, I'll have to wait and see.

I have a lot more coca and mate, if it's halfway decent I'll come up with a real recipe down the line.

 

[Forestgrover]

Let me know how it all comes out, I have a ton of loose leaf yerba mate and had thought of something like that myself.

 

[bovineblitz]

Let me know how it all comes out, I have a ton of loose leaf yerba mate and had thought of something like that myself.

Unfortunately my experiment was ruined by a pretty extreme case of diacetyl (infection from tubing, I'm fairly certain). I could only stomach half a bottle of each.

I will say, beyond the diacetyl, the beers seemed like they'd probably be promising and pretty strong in the stimulant department (the coca was a little too strong I think). I liked that I used half roasted yerba mate, it actually didn't affect the color at all and the roasty flavor was very light. The teas didn't seem to bitter the beers as much as I expected.

I'll likely be doing another batch at some point in the near future... probably just going ahead and using yerba mate and coca together as I like combining them in a tea.

 

[mmurray]

I've done a green tea beer and used 15 tea bags in 1 gallon of water. Steeped for 60 min in 180* water. Then I chilled the gallon of water and used the cold 1 gallon of green tea to help bring my 1.5 gallon brew down to pitching temps.

I like the beer, but it's pretty bitter. Next time I'll cut down to 6-8 tea bags and use the same method for a new 2.5 gal batch.

I don't know how bitter the Cocoa tea is naturally, but that would be the only thing I would worry about.

 

[bovineblitz]

I don't know how bitter the Cocoa tea is naturally, but that would be the only thing I would worry about.

It's actually coca, not cacao. Though, I did just brew a stout where after the boil I cooled it down to about 190 and steeped 1 pound of cacao shells in it. In a couple weeks I'm going to taste and decide whether or not to add nibs to the secondary.

Cacao tea is fairly bitter and tastes nutty and dark chocolatey.

Coca tea tastes basically like green tea, it's bitter and grassy.

 

[mmurray]

Coca tea tastes basically like green tea, it's bitter and grassy.

Ok then... I don't know how to measure the IBU's of tea other than trial and error so I'll just reiterate less might be more... I could still drink mine but the Green Tea... Uh? CAN'T BE MISSED! LOL... I like bitter beers so they haven't gone to waste. But for the over all drinking pleasure of SWMBO and friends I'll tone the green tea and bitterness back on my next try.


and for the other stuff you replied... I'll take your word for it because I don't know what it is! :cross: