Chai Tea Beer Recipe Help

looking for someone to give comments on this prospective recipe...


BeerSmith Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Chai Beer
Brewer: 3 Wangs Brewing
Asst Brewer:
Style: Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (??)

Recipe Specifications
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Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 6.5 gal
Estimated OG: 1.056 SG
Estimated Color: 9.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 20.0 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Ingredients:
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Amount Item Type % or IBU
5.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 52.63 %
1.00 lb Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM) Grain 10.53 %
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.26 %
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] (75 min) (First Wort Hop) Hops 9.8 IBU
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] (60 min) Hops 8.5 IBU
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] (5 min) Hops 1.7 IBU
20.00 items chai tea bag (Boil 5.0 min) Misc
3.00 lb Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 31.58 %
1 Pkgs Belgian Saison (Wyeast Labs #3724)
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Notes:
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Mash grains at 155 for 50 minutes. Mash out with 170* water to collect 6.5 gallon wort. With first runnings add FWH addition and 20 chia tea bags. Let rest for 30 minutes from start of wort collection. Remove tea bags, bring water to boil. Add hops per schedule. Add honey at flameout. Rest 10 minutes, then cool with wort chiller. Cool to 70*, pitch yeast.
Ferment 2 weeks, rack to secondary. Taste, add Chai tea to "dry hop" to taste.

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any suggestions would be nice! TIA!

 

Brewed this up yesterday...We'll see how it turns out.

 

I'm interested to hear how this turns out.

 

I brewed a tea beer not long ago with 20 tea bags worth of earl grey added at flameout. The aroma was great.

 

Saw a tea beer like this a few weeks ago and thought to myself "wonder if chai would be good in a beer". Glad to hear some one else is doing it let us know how it turns out I definitely want to try making one of these.

 

Almost 2 weeks.. Hows this coming along? Very interested..

 

Just saw this, everything about the recipe seems good except for the Saaz, just don't see Noble hops going well with chai flavors, but who knows it might work out well! Makes me wonder also, what kind of ibu's would tea add, not to mention the cardamom and cloves that are likely to be in a chai mix.

 

OK, so I racked this beer to secondary. OG was 1.054, today's reading was 1.015. The taste was not bad, but needed more Chai flavor. I made a tea with a pint of water from my tea pot and 6 bags of chai, let it steep for 15 minutes and added the tea and bags to the secondary.
Also, my LHBS did not have saison yeast, so I ended up using Safbrew T-58, which is a belgian strain I used with my Trappist last year. The yeast added a lot of flavor to the brew, so I want to counter with more Chai flavor. We'll see how the dry-hopping of the tea bags adds flavor over the next week.
As to the Saaz hops...well, I bought a pound of them with my last bulk hop buy...along with warrior and cascade. I was making this recipe up, and was not sure how much bitterness the tea would add, so I wanted to go easy on the hops, and the Saaz were the lowest AA I had at the house...This was my first time using them.
So, all in all, it needs some time to absorb the chai, so I'll chime in next time I taste it.

 

So, I kegged this today. So far I'm very happy with this beer. There is a definite Chai aroma and good chai taste to this brew. I was not sure how the chai would work into the beer and was afraid it would add too much bitterness; especially from 'dry-hopping' the tea bags, but if anything, it's a little sweat. FG was 1.010. It's tasty and refreshing. The chai it present, but not bold. If I make this again, I'd put more tea bags in the secondary and add more IBU's of hops.

 

So, after leaving this to cold condition and carb for a couple of weeks in my keezer, this turned out very good. Not something I would drink 3-4 glasses of every night, but definitely tasty. After letting it sit, now I don't think I'd change anything. It's good as it is.

 

Sounds like an interesting beer. I might have try it.

 

lol...3 Wangs

 

Just got my last couple bottles back. Everyone really liked this as a Chai Beer. Bottled with BMBF. Hope everyone enjoys.

 

Gonna add this one to my brew list...was thinking about future brews and thought that chai would be a really good flavor with a brown ale. I'll check this out.

Any tips to do this with extract? I can't add the bags to the first run like you did (obviously)

 

Interesting read. I've had a chai stout in queue for a while but I really like the Saison idea.

 

Jeff-
I would start with cold filtered water in your brew kettle. Add the tea bags (I used Bigalow) to the cold water and bring water up to 155°F. Hold here for 30 min with any steeping grains you'll be using. Remove steeping grains and heat water to 170°F. Remove tea bags and add FWH hops. Follow your extract routine from here.

 

Looks like a great recipe. I was actually thinking of doing something with Chai for an upcoming brew. Just curious if using 3# of Honey malt vs. pure honey during flameout would change the taste/profile of the beer. I would imagine it would make it darker in color & slightly higher in ABV but wasn't sure about overall taste. I would imagine honey malt in the mash might give it a sweeter taste & that may/may not be something you would want for this beer.

Just curious.

 

Adding honey malt in place of honey will change a lot about this beer. Not that that would be a bad thing. I love to experiment. What I believe it would do is 1) make less alcohol. Honey ferments almost completely out, and the sugar content of honey is higher then that of honey malt. 2) the beer will have more body than the original. 3) it will make a more sweet final product, which is what honey malt is supposed to do.
Feel free to try what you like. The beer I made benefits from bottle conditioning for a few months.

 

Thanks! I will just use the honey during flameout & stick to the recipe as is. I may experiment with it later after I've tried it. Plus it will give me the opportunity to eat some of the "leftover" honey after flameout.

 

I'm planning on doing a Honey Lager with Chai Tea this weekend but I'm thinking of using Nugget hops. Will the spice of the nugget and spice of the chai be too much? I'll lager till the first week of Dec. as I'm planning this for my annual Christmas party brew.

 

I haven't used Nugget hops much, so I don't know. I guess it depends on how much and when you use them. I wouldn't use much. You want the tea to shine through and a lager will finish drier then the ale.