fermentables for a light tea wine

[Salmonlust]

Hi guys,

I recently saw some sparkling tea for sale in a champagne bottle so I thought why not try to make a tea wine of sorts.

I was thinking of making a black tea + lemon variety and a "cleaner" white tea + chamomile/jasmine one. I want to try to maintain as much as possible the tea characteristics so i thought it might be best not to go for a high abv (so maybe more of a hard tea than tea wine). I was wondering about the best fermentable sugar to maintain as much tea characteristics as I can. I thought granulated sugar would maybe impart too sweet a flavour and honey would bring it's own thing. Is dextrose the way to go here? Any other fermentable sugar that would give me a nice "clean" fermentation without adding additional flavours? (except for sweet sweet alcohol of course).

ps. sorry if I'm way off on anything, I've exclusively been a kirkland apple juice cider maker for my first year of fermenting.

 

[Krasdale]

Dextrose will taste a lot better without aging.

 

[Brett_Bellmore]

Might be best to steep the tea in the wine in secondary; Fermenting the actual tea could dramatically change the flavor. Mind, some people like the change in the flavor, so that's up to you.

In terms of fermentables, any pure fermentable sugar is going to be pretty much interchangeable in terms of ultimate flavor if you ferment it dry. (Honey not being a pure sugar, of course.) So I'd just go with table sugar as likely the cheapest.

Where you'll notice a difference is in the sugar you use for back sweetening it after it's fermented and stabilized. The beverage companies claim there's no difference, but there is: Table sugar has a faster onset, a "sharper" sweetness, while something like corn syrup will come in more gradually, even if the ultimate sweetness is the same in the end.