Green tea cider

[Zymomancer]

I'm developing a 1 gallon recipe for a green tea (sencha to be exact) cider that focuses a lot on being "crisp and refreshing" while letting the vegetal flavour of the sencha come out. I recently made some iced sencha tea and really liked how the relatively low astringency made the tea feel more refreshing, something that's great for iced tea during the summer. Of course, I thought of how to make it work in booze form...

1 gallon Store-bought Apple Juice
½ tsp Lalvin EC-1118
1 lime, juiced, no zest (for acid)
1 tsp yeast nutrient (or alternative)

Added in secondary:
4 tbsp Sencha leaves (enough for 4 liters of straight tea)
Adding in secondary means less tannins are extracted... I've had similar results from cold-brewing iced tea.

Bottling:
No backsweetening (I hate sweet tea! Also makes things easier)
2.0 volumes CO2

I'm mainly wondering:

• Yeast choice: I sort of want the tea to be the star of the show, and the apple to merely add depth and make it more than just mysteriously alcoholic tea. This is why I chose EC-1118, since I noticed a young cider made with it tastes a bit more neutral and winey than the fruity results from ale yeasts. I also chose it because it's much easier to brew during the summer, and to generally not worry as much about temperature.
• Does it sound like I shouldn't even be bothering with the "cider" part? Maybe it's better as a mead, beer, rice wine, or something else?
• Would increased ABV help? I assumed booziness would make it taste less "refreshing"
• Should I bother with the lime? Don't know if a little citric acid would improve or detract from the "crisp and refreshing" objective.
• Is 2.0 volumes enough or should I try higher? I feel like high carbonation is important for this one. I'm mainly just paranoid about bottle bombs.

 

[jimmerz]

Almost a year and no replies? Well, how did you fair? I am interested in trying some hard Green tea myself, maybe with some peach!

 

[Zymomancer]

I actually never got around to trying this out

Maybe I'll do it sometime soon... I have a bit of a backlog: seconds from multiple whole-fruit wines, makgeolli, a roggenbier gruit, and probably one or two I forgot about.