Flavoring with tea?

[CaptainArgo]

Hey folks,

I have a good friend who really loves rooibos tea, and I thought I'd do a half-batch of a rooibos Irish red ale as an experiment / first foray into "flavored" beers. I figured that the loamy, earthy taste of the tea would work well with the roasty flavors of an Irish red, and the color should be pretty nice too.

Up until now, though, the few recipes I've done have been relatively straightforward; a saison, or a dry stout, with only a handful of specialty grains to steep or mash. Stuff I can put into BeerSmith. With the tea idea, I'm not really sure how to go about it. Should I steep it in the boil before adding the wort? Or should I make a gallon of tea and mix it with the wort in the fermenter? How much tea should I steep per gallon if I want a nice balance of tea and beer flavors?

Thanks for any tips you guys can offer

 

[william_shakes_beer]

Make a gallon or so of tea and add a little it to the bottling bucket with the priming solution. Allows you to taste the finished beer, add a little tea, stir retaste, repeat.

 

[kal]

Just make sure to not sweeten the tea as you'll already have priming sugar in there... you don't want to create bottle bombs (Very dangerous).

KAl

 

[Smeato]

This is an idea I had as well, I'm very interested in ways of creating a Tea induced beer. Let us know how you get on!

 

[WWJPD]

I'm working on a tea-beer experiment for my homebrew club using growlers for fermentors. I'm in the dry hop stage, hoping to bottle in a day or 2. I used a combination of Pineapple Kona Pop and Passionfruit tea.

Fermentor 1-no tea, just base beer pale ale
Fermentor 2-base beer + 8oz steeeped tea added post primary fermentation
Fermentor 3-base beer + 4tsp tea leaves "dry hopped" 2 days, post primary fermentation
Fermentor 4-base beer + 4tsp tea leaves added for entire fermentation
Fermentor 5-base beer + 4oz of "wort tea" added for entire fermentation
Fermentor 6-Same as fermentor 5 + 4tsp tea leaves "dry hopped" 2 days, post fermentation.

I sure hope the base beer doesn't suck! The wort tasted good.

I'll post results in about 2 weeks.

 

[duboman]

You can make a batch of the tea as normal, pour a measured glass of the beer and add a measured amount of the tea to the glass with a pipette or syringe. Once it is at the flavor you like simply scale up to batch size

 

[cannman]

Do a search for "Green Tea Stout recipe." This might inspire you

 

[drainbamage]

Brew the tea as usual, cool, and add at bottling time. The amount you use can vary depending on how much flavor you want so, as others have said, make a couple quarts (or more) and add until you achieve the taste you want. Don't mix too hard when you add to your bottling bucket, so you don't oxidize the beer.

 

[boicutt]

WWJPD, please report back this looks like a really interesting experiment!

 

[BrewmeisterSmith]

I'm in the process of making a peach cobbler beer. I added 20 tea bags of "perfect peach" to flame out. I just racked it yesterday on to 8 lbs of frozen peaches. I was impressed by the flavor that the tea gave it. It also had a great nose.

 

[CaptainArgo]

Thanks for the great suggestions everyone

Make a gallon or so of tea and add a little it to the bottling bucket with the priming solution. Allows you to taste the finished beer, add a little tea, stir retaste, repeat.

This is a great idea! I guess my one concern in this case is about gravity. I imagine I'd have to make a pretty high gravity wort in anticipation of adding a fair amount of liquid to the finished beer without really knowing exactly how much I'll end up adding. Will having to make a "big" beer to offset the extra liquid affect my yeast selection? Will the higher alcohol concentration make the yeast stall, only to resume once it is thinned out (and bottled)?

If those things aren't worries, that sounds like a great way to get the exact flavor balance!

I'm working on a tea-beer experiment for my homebrew club using growlers for fermentors. I'm in the dry hop stage, hoping to bottle in a day or 2.

I'll post results in about 2 weeks.

Great experiment! I'm looking forward to the results!

 

[Koach]

I brewed a version of the orange/cascade pale ale recipe from the forums here over a year ago substituting satsumas from my parents' back yard. After consulting the forums here, I added 2.5 opened bags of chamomile tea to secondary when I did my dry hopping. Chamomile isn't exactly your average "tea" so while it didn't do much for color, I loved the flavor. When I make the recipe again (when this year's satsumas are in season) I'd probably lower the tea to 2 bags per 5 gallons to make it a little more subtle.

The point is, they were fine in the secondary, and I didn't have to worry about dilution/recipe alteration. For traditional tea, I'd keep it in the bags, though. If you are fermenting in a carboy, you can keep an eye on your color day by day. If the tea is strong I'd sample it every day or two, just like if you were resting a beer on oak chips or an oak spiral.

 

[AkTom]

I'm in the process of making a peach cobbler beer. I added 20 tea bags of "perfect peach" to flame out. I just racked it yesterday on to 8 lbs of frozen peaches. I was impressed by the flavor that the tea gave it. It also had a great nose.

Let us know how your peach beer comes out. I did Cream of 3 Crops, split into 2 carboys. After fermenting added 5# frozen peaches for almost 3 weeks. It didn't have any peach flavor. So I'd like to try something work.

 

[Beernik]

Thanks for the great suggestions everyone



This is a great idea! I guess my one concern in this case is about gravity. I imagine I'd have to make a pretty high gravity wort in anticipation of adding a fair amount of liquid to the finished beer without really knowing exactly how much I'll end up adding. Will having to make a "big" beer to offset the extra liquid affect my yeast selection? Will the higher alcohol concentration make the yeast stall, only to resume once it is thinned out (and bottled)?

If those things aren't worries, that sounds like a great way to get the exact flavor balance!




Great experiment! I'm looking forward to the results!

What I did was brew 4.75 gallons of beer in anticipation of adding 0.25 gallons of tea. My pre-mixing ABV was 5.5%. My post mixing ABV is about 5.2%.

 

[CaptainArgo]

What I did was brew 4.75 gallons of beer in anticipation of adding 0.25 gallons of tea. My pre-mixing ABV was 5.5%. My post mixing ABV is about 5.2%.

Oh, that's not so drastic after all. How did it come out?
I'd like to have a fairly strong tea flavor as opposed to just a subtle background, but I really don't have any idea of how much it will take to achieve it.

 

[Beernik]

Mine isn't too strong but it's noticeable. It was supposed to be Thai tea flavored but ended up more like a spiced tea. You can find the thread here.

The original plan was to add 0.5 gallons if tea. But I don't know that I really needed it.

 

[rhys333]

I'm working on a tea-beer experiment for my homebrew club using growlers for fermentors. I'm in the dry hop stage, hoping to bottle in a day or 2. I used a combination of Pineapple Kona Pop and Passionfruit tea.

Fermentor 1-no tea, just base beer pale ale
Fermentor 2-base beer + 8oz steeeped tea added post primary fermentation
Fermentor 3-base beer + 4tsp tea leaves "dry hopped" 2 days, post primary fermentation
Fermentor 4-base beer + 4tsp tea leaves added for entire fermentation
Fermentor 5-base beer + 4oz of "wort tea" added for entire fermentation
Fermentor 6-Same as fermentor 5 + 4tsp tea leaves "dry hopped" 2 days, post fermentation.

I sure hope the base beer doesn't suck! The wort tasted good.

I'll post results in about 2 weeks.

Please do post back. I made a 1.5L test batch with black tea a few weeks ago. Got one bottle out of it, plus fermentor dregs which I sampled (and tasted aweful btw). I'll pop the bottle in another two weeks here.

 

[WWJPD]

I forgot to post back my results till I saw another thread...

I brought my tea experiment to my homebrew club for them to judge. I was very happy the base beer didn't suck. It was pretty good, but nothing special, so exactly what I had hoped.

We had about 10 to 12 people at the homebrew club meeting and then I had 4 others judge at my house the next week. The results were consistent between the HBC and our get together.

Overall, favs were:
#1-Fermentor 6-Same as fermentor 5 + 4tsp tea leaves "dry hopped" 2 days, post fermentation.
#2-Fermentor 4-base beer + 4tsp tea leaves added for entire fermentation
#3-Fermentor 3-base beer + 4tsp tea leaves "dry hopped" 2 days, post primary fermentation
#4-Fermentor 5-base beer + 4oz of "wort tea" added for entire fermentation

The dry hopping really added the most aroma. I was surprised at how well the one with tea leaves in for the entire fermentation came out. Many people said that Fermentor4 was the most balanced.

Sometime in the next 6 months, I will make a 5gal batch and I'm going to go with the winner of the experiment... a wort tea + 2 days of dry hopping.

As I noted in the other thread I posted to, this was a fruity, aromatic tea blend, not very bitter. If you are going to be adding a more bitter blend of tea, my results may not be applicable.

 

[dnslater]

I added chamomile teal along with coriander and orange peel to a Belgian wit for my wife. She loved it.

 

[BrewmeisterSmith]

The peach wheat turned out fantastic. It needed rounding, so i added about 2 shots of peachtree to the keg. It ended up taking first place in our Oktoberfest competition. I'm convinced that this is the way to go when working with peaches. Try it and be amazed.