Infusing Chai flavor?

[TransportJockey]

Well I just finished drinking my first home brew batch, a chai spiced english ale. It came out very good. Now for my next batch I'm curious about making a chai infused Imperial stout. I already have the kit for the stout, I'm just curious what the best way to infuse a chai flavor to the stout would be? Adding spices into the fermenter during fermentation, or adding chai tea during mash? I'm just curious.

 

[FatDragon]

Your first beer had chai flavor. Now you're asking how to make a chai-flavored beer? Perhaps you could detail what you did to get the chai flavor/aroma into your first beer and then explain how that differs from what you want to do with this next beer.

Barring that, my knee-jerk response is to add chai spices in the boil at or shortly before flameout. I would guess that your total weight of spices should probably be around ten grams for a five gallon batch, but I haven't done anything like this so wait for someone else's advice before you do it.

If you actually want the tea flavor as well, that might be a bit more of a challenge, as it gets covered up by beer flavors pretty quickly. Some tea leaves/bags in the mash would probably help, maybe some whirlpool after the boil, dry-hopping with tea, or even mixing your priming sugar into a strong chai tea mixture at bottling. I've tried making tea beers a couple times and haven't managed it yet, but I'm still hopeful I'll get it down in time.

 

[TransportJockey]

Your first beer had chai flavor. Now you're asking how to make a chai-flavored beer? Perhaps you could detail what you did to get the chai flavor/aroma into your first beer and then explain how that differs from what you want to do with this next beer.

Barring that, my knee-jerk response is to add chai spices in the boil at or shortly before flameout. I would guess that your total weight of spices should probably be around ten grams for a five gallon batch, but I haven't done anything like this so wait for someone else's advice before you do it.

If you actually want the tea flavor as well, that might be a bit more of a challenge, as it gets covered up by beer flavors pretty quickly. Some tea leaves/bags in the mash would probably help, maybe some whirlpool after the boil, dry-hopping with tea, or even mixing your priming sugar into a strong chai tea mixture at bottling. I've tried making tea beers a couple times and haven't managed it yet, but I'm still hopeful I'll get it down in time.

I should have added that there's a batch already in one of my fermenters that's an amber ale. Lol I just tried the Stone Chai Stout and wanna see if I can make something similar, since it's a one time brew and really really good.
As for the last batch, in place of priming sugar the recipe called for a mix of sugar and spices during bottling. It tasted great, but didn't seem to fully dissolve. I was trying to avoid that little bit of grainy feeling at the end of the beer. Thanks for the advice though, I'll look at trying just adding it in the boil. I'm not so much trying to replicate the tea taste itself, just the spice profile.

 

[FatDragon]

I should have added that there's a batch already in one of my fermenters that's an amber ale. Lol I just tried the Stone Chai Stout and wanna see if I can make something similar, since it's a one time brew and really really good.
As for the last batch, in place of priming sugar the recipe called for a mix of sugar and spices during bottling. It tasted great, but didn't seem to fully dissolve. I was trying to avoid that little bit of grainy feeling at the end of the beer. Thanks for the advice though, I'll look at trying just adding it in the boil. I'm not so much trying to replicate the tea taste itself, just the spice profile.

Cool. Late boil spices should flocculate out of the beer before bottling while still presumably adding their flavors (assuming they're soluble), or you could toss whole spices in a hop bag like you would with a dry hop late in fermentation or bulk aging. I like the latter idea because you can tailor your chai spice mix and do periodic tastings to see when you feel like the spice level is where you want it, but it's a bit more effort and potentially more expensive than just tossing a predetermined amount of chai spice mix into the boil. Hopefully someone will pop in soon with more experience for practical advice rather than just riffing ideas.

 

[Denny]

In our seminar at NHC last summer, Drew made a 10 second chai tincture. Get one of those whippers that uses nitrous oxide cartridges. Put some chai and vodka in it. Screw on a cartridge and shake like crazy. Take that one off, put on another one and do it again. Release the nitrous pressure and you have a chai tincture ready to add to glass or keg.