Hard Tea Recipe?

I had read a thread awhile back about a hard lemonade recipe and there was a talk of a hard tea recipe. It was going to be posted, but I don't think it ever was. Does anyone have a recipe for the tea? Summer is coming and I need to be ready for the hot days!

yes, i was lookin' for this too.

maybe take a standard recipe (real ale etc.) and add a few litres of strong tea to the primary before adding the yeast. maybe even a bit of mint.
i'm thinking of doing that and also adding the chai tea spices (cloves, ginger, cinnamon, cardamon, black pepper and sometimes more)

the important thing here would be not to BOIL your tea leaves/bags so as not to extract all the tannins.

i actually wanna try oolong tea, as i've found oolong tea to have quite a ceffeine kick, although it's alot smoother than coffee (doesn't give your stomach trouble etc.)

but then, oolong tea is a step closer to green tea, so it will be quite bitter, which means a lot of experimentation/guesswork figuring out how much/little hops to add.

the important thing here would be not to BOIL your tea leaves/bags so as not to extract all the tannins.

Click to expand...

Tannins are what gives tea flavor and color.

Me personnally I would make 2 gallons of sun tea- really thick
Add it to 4 gallons of wort and then boil. Add 2lbs of after fermentation.

I've been looking around the net for a Hard Tea recipe as well... found very little useful info so I decided to just give it a whirl.

My recipe

• 1 box tea bags (100ct)
• 1 lb Light DME
• 3.5 lbs Corn Sugar
• 2 lbs Table Sugar
• 6 Lemons, cut in half
• Red Star Premier Cuvee


I boiled 5 gallons water + all the sugar for 15 min. Then Squeezed the lemons and put them in, added the 100 tea bags in a 5 gallon paint strainer... Steeped the tea for 5 min as per instructions and removed.

I left the lemons in there (it's cooling as I type) and haven't yet decided whether or not to leave them through primary fermentation.

The sugar I used was just what I had on hand at the moment, same with the yeast... If I had some dry beer yeast on hand I probably would have split the batch in half to see what tasted better. The whole deal cost me less that $10, so if it's no good I'll have no problem dumping it.

I will update after first tasting.

IMHO, I would go with a recipe that uses no DME or LME.
I don't think we are looking for a malt taste. The lemon should probably be added to taste after fermentation (unless you are looking to ferment the lemon juice).

I would brew a really strong southern sweet tea and then ferment it with montrachet or something like that. Maybe I will try a pilot gallon of this and see what happens.

The only Hard tea I've had was that raw tea stuff by Smirnoff that my girl friend had.....it was actually not bad except it had a kinda cough syrup twang to it. Anyways...like all the Smirnoff crap it said it was a malt beverage.

I don't think Malt extract is out of place in a hard tea recipe... I taste my wort when I'm brewing and I think it actually taste quite a bit like tea & as RodfatherX pointed out, most (if not all) commercial versions of these are malt beverages.

I probably would have used more extract if I had it on hand... I though about mashing some 2-row but decided it wasn't worth the time...

As far as the lemons go, It's quite possible I'll have to add more in the secondary. Although, I have made wheat beer w/ orange zest in the primary and it definitely comes through in the finished product. We shall see.

Couevas, if you brew up that gallon, let us know how it turns out!

?

I will definately let you know.

I have some montrachet on the way that I may be able to use instead of a second batch of Apfelwein.

Any updates on this recipe?

Still fermenting?

I was wondering if anyone had any luck with the tea recipe?
trying my own I'll post it if it works out:rockin:

I personally wasn't thrilled with the batch that I made. I had tasted it a few days into primary and it was really good but as it fermented out alot of the tea flavor I was looking for seemed to get scrubbed away and I was left with a really winey tasting beverage. I wasn't really diggin the flavor from the yeast. I probably should have let it age longer, but it was taking up valuable real estate in one of my carboys so I drank it.

I will probably try again next summer with a beer yeast... would be interested to hear if anyone made a successful batch.

Could you possibly make a plain malt wort then add tea after fermentation before bottling?

Would it not be possible to "reinforce" the tea flavor by reracking onto more teabags and letting it sit?