Malt Liquor Extract Recipe for Twisted Tea Clone

[Cistum]

Hey all,

FNG to the forums, but I'm excited to field responses to my question. I've been looking for a malt liquor extract recipe, but have only found recipes for all grain. With a visit to my local homebrew store, I was informed that it would be almost impossible to achieve the same body with extract as I could with all grain. However, seeing as this is only a trial and error attempt at making a decent Twisted Tea clone, I'm not entirely concerned with the body of the alcohol solution. With that being said, I need a good jumping-off point for a malt liquor extract recipe.

My idea is to ferment a high ABV solution and dilute it into my tea solution, which would be several different variations of a recipe at once. Has anyone tried a clone of Twisted Tea? If so, how did you deal with the tannin in the tea? I was thinking of using instant tea, but I don't feel like it would taste as "Tea-y" as I'd like.

Thanks in advance!

 

[dilligafbrewing]

What I would do:

Start small. Get a 4 liter jug (Carlos Rossi wine) and make a gallon batch of your malt liquor. I would use a pound of the lightest DME you can find and add .75 lb of corn or cane sugar to raise the alcohol content. Boil long enough to get the malt to break but not long enough to caramelize it....15 min should do it. Add a whirlfloc tablet at beginning of boil, this will help drop the proteins out and get you a cleaner product. After 15 min you need to cool it down fast. Set the kettle in a Sink full of salty ice water and maybe freeze water in a plastic container you can float inside your pot. Get it down to 72° or so, siphon as clean of a wort as you can off the coagulated proteins and top up to one gallon. Pitch either a very clean ale or maybe wine or champagne yeast, but only 1/3 of a packet and ferment until you get a gravity close to 1.01.

Twisted tea is sweet tasting. In order to have your finished product taste sweet you need to exterminate all the yeast so they can't eat up the sugar. Sulfites or pasteurizing will accomplish that. Id go the sulfite route. First use gelatin or a fining agent to get as much yeast out of suspension as possible, then siphon off to 2nd container, treat with Camden and hope for the best.

Cold-steeping your tea should limit tannin extraction. Find a recipe on the net. Brew it strong because you're going to dilute it about 1:1 with malt liquor in order to get a 5℅ abv drink. Sweeten to your liking, bottle and hope for the best.

If it's ****, at least it's only a gallon of ****.

Good luck.