Satsuma Pale Ale - when to Chamomile?

[Koach]

So I was inspired by a recipe I found on the forums (and the fact that my parents had a Satsuma tree in their back yard) to make 10 gallons of a Satsuma pale ale. With 10 minutes to go in the boil, I added satsuma zest and coriander. My intention was to dry hop w/ cascades and more coriander.

After completing the brew & while primary was still going on, I was looking up some things online and saw that one of the major brewers listed chamomile as a "secret" ingredient in their orange-flavored wheat beer. So on a whim I added 2.5 teabags worth to the dry hop for 5 gallons of my ale. What the hell, right? I loved it better than the regular beer. It added a depth and smoothness to the flavor profile.

I'm tweaking the recipe in my records now to get ready for "Satsuma Season" next fall, so my question is this: "Would I have been better off adding the chamomile to the brew or is adding it to the secondary the better option?"

 

[kingwood-kid]

Tea is supposed to be made hot, but sub-boiling. Of course, chamomile tea doesn't have actual tea in it. I would say adding it at or soon after flameout might be best, but the CO2 produced in fermentation might drive off a lot of the aromatics. You could just make a tea with it and add at bottling, even using it to dissolve your carbing sugar. I also don't see any reason why a dry hop wouldn't work with it. You'd lose the heat, but the alcohol from the beer might extract different flavors than hot water. I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but I think you could get good and fairly similar results from any method. I've always done the tea option with these sort of unfermentable and unpredictable flavors, because I could test out a few ounces to find the right ratio and scale accordingly.