Second Brew (Hard Iced/Sweet Tea)

[bennerman]

Hey there, so I'm making my second brew (my first brew was just bread yeast, ginger, sugar, and lemon and lime juice and zest. Not bad, actually). Now I'm thinking Iced Tea (or Sweet Tea as some of the more southern folks here might call it) and I was wondering if you guys could take a look at my planned recipe and tell me what you think?

-6 Tetley Tea Bags (the normal iced tea recipe on the website calls for 4 tea bags for a gallon. I'm doing 1.5x as much to account for flavour lost during fermentation, something I didn't account for in my first ginger ale recipe)
-11oz White Sugar
-10.5oz Brown Sugar
-1g (1/5 of package) Lalvin EC-1118 Champagne Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae (ex bayanus))
These will all be boiled in 2 quarts for just long enough to sterilize, then the bags will be removed and cold water and ice will be added to bring the volume up to 1 gallon and the temperature down to 70 degrees or so (as per the "virgin" iced tea recipe)

Sweetener (and lemon, plus possibly lime juice) will be added in the glass prior to serving

As well, can anyone give me the name of any products from other brands that use that exact same yeast, or a very similar one? I'm looking for one that hopefully appears on the list of yeasts in this calculator, as I am aiming for approx. 6% or 7% abv and want to get my sugars right:
http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/

Additionally, boiling can be minimal, as the simple sugars I'm using can be used by the yeast without mashing/malting, right?

What do you think?

Edit: Oh, plus dechlorination. So I'm looking at closer to 20 minutes on the boil

 

[bennerman]

Oh, I heard this yeast is very aggressive. Will it be ok in 2 sterilized 2L pop bottles, or would it be better to half-fill 4 2L pop bottles to give the gasses room to expand without exploding?

 

[bennerman]

Alright, don't really got any more time to wait for responses. I'll report back

 

[bennerman]

48 hours in. Had a bit of trouble with temperature control (ambient temp was at a respectable 70 degrees for the first 44 hours, then shot up to 80). Got in a water bath now at 68 degrees. Aiming for 65 or 60.

 

[bennerman]

192 (+/-) hours in. Smells beery with a hint of sourness (but no sour TASTE), so possible minor bacterial contamination, but nothing too bad. Still fermenting. Bath temp hasn't gone above 65f since hour 72. No pictures because there's no visual change.

 

[bennerman]

Can anyone give me even a rough estimate on long this should take, without a hydrometer?

Sour smell is gone, which is good

 

[bennerman]

It chugs along as always. Very bitter, alcoholic taste as of yesterday, so it's gotta run out of steam soon

 

[buzz1670]

keep us posted

 

[bennerman]

This is the brew that never ends
It just goes on and on my friends~


Seriously. Stop. Please Stop. It's been 4 weeks. Please stop fermenting. Please.

Come on, yeast. Please. Stop.

 

[Hanglow]

Just for next time, I would never boil tetley tea bags, you'll get far too much tannin from them if you are doing a tea beer. If you want to remove any potential bugs then just google pasteurisation temperatures, something like 75C for a ten minutes or so will pasteurise it. Have a check for the amount of time needed.

 

[Vamptrump]

Tea + Boil = Tannins = Bad

That being said. I'm curious how something can smell "beery" without hops or malt. So this is pretty much hootch, but I'm curious to see if it actually comes out tasting like sweet tea and not fermented sugar water with tea.

 

[hifidelity]

This is the brew that never ends
It just goes on and on my friends~


Seriously. Stop. Please Stop. It's been 4 weeks. Please stop fermenting. Please.

Come on, yeast. Please. Stop.

I doubt it's still fermenting after 4 weeks. Easiest way to check is by taking hydrometer readings a couple days apart. If the two readings are the same then fermentation has ceased. If the airlock is still bubbling after 4 weeks it's probably just CO2 (which was created by the yeast weeks ago...) coming out of solution.

 

[bennerman]

Tea + Boil = Tannins = Bad

That being said. I'm curious how something can smell "beery" without hops or malt. So this is pretty much hootch, but I'm curious to see if it actually comes out tasting like sweet tea and not fermented sugar water with tea.

Beery was more a reflection of it's current alcohol content at the time.

I.e. the alcohol smell was "beery" (say, 4-5%, rather than "Colt Forty-Fivey" or "winey")

 

[bennerman]

Let's talk iced tea, shall we?

It's dry. Very dry. And fairly strong in alcohol content.

Trying to tame it with splenda alone only resulted in a drink that somehow managed to be overly sweet and overly bitter at the exact same time. However, mixing said overly sweetened iced tea with 1/5 sprite resulted in a perfectly palatable drink, and I imagine 1/3 or even 1/2 sprite with a more subdued dose of splenda would actually be fairly refreshing. I'm trying to hold back, as my friend wants to give it a try, so I will let you guys know later tonight or tomorrow. I'm calling this a maybe for now

 

[bennerman]

Well, we drank it. Got us pretty drunk, and nobody seems to have gotten a hangover or anything. Definitely have to adjust the recipe, but I'd say it has promise