Tea!!!

[WarBully]

Okay, now that I have gotten your attention with that lame thread title, I am asking if anyone has any input/advice/tips on brewing a tea beer. I have an itea for it but am not sure how to get that tea flavor. The equipment my friend and I will be using is a kettle that can handle a 6 1/2 gallon boil easily, primary and secondary fermentor, and a 6 1/2 gallon bucket. Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[sfgoat]

I've tried a couple test runs with tea but it just didn't work pre-ferm. Made it taste like vomit. Maybe add tea to secondary on a pale recipe.

 

[snowtires]

My brother in law steeped about 15 tea bags in a coopers ore hopped Canadian blond extract. He gave me a bottle and I was expecting the worst but it was fantastic. Very good tea and crisp beer balance

 

[FatDragon]

I've tried one beer and read a bunch of threads in preparation to try again. The first attempt didn't really work out, but I was adding dry tea at the same ratio you would with hops, or in one of the four split batches, cold-brewed tea in the same sort of volume you'd use if you were adding cold-brewed coffee, which has a far stronger flavor to stand up to the rest of the beer.

What kind of tea are you planning on using, and what kind of beer base are you thinking of? I haven't nailed down my next attempt yet, but I'm leaning toward a light wheat beer with a healthy dose of strongly-brewed black tea from southwest China after primary fermentation, probably with the leaves tossed in for a little extra extraction.

 

[Pkrd]

Yeastie Boys do a Tea Leaf IPA called "Gunnamatta" that rates pretty well.

http://www.yeastieboys.co.nz/beer/gunnamatta-ipa/

Aussiehomebrewers having a crack:
http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/72271-yeastie-boys-gunnamatta-tea-leaf-ipa-clone/

 

[Math0]

I tried 3 times with mint tea and green tea. My opinion is that it is very very hard to know how the tea will react with the beer type and how long you should leave it in secondary. I wanted to try a very light mint flavor in a stout I made a while back. I finally forgot the single tea bag in a 3L test batch for a week. The smell was only mint. I bottled it anyway and it took me one sip when ready to throw all the bottles away. Undrinkable.