Tea Beer Phase 4: Tasting

The time has come. It's been a couple of weeks in the bottle, and it's time to taste the tea beers!

First up is the Jasmine Oolong (my wife decided we should try that one first). This one poured a clear, pale golden yellow. This tea doesn't impart a lot of color. The carbonation was good, though the head dissipated quickly. I don't know if that's oils from the tea killing the head retention, because I thought the Carapils and bit of crystal malt would help with the head retention. The aroma is distinctly of jasmine. As for the actual tasting, the jasmine flavor is right up front. Once the jasmine flavor gives out, the tea flavor and the tea bitterness come in. It's a good thing that there was some residual sweetness in the base beer to stand up to the bitterness that would come from the tea. The tea bitterness is a smooth bitterness, though, and lingers for quite some time. Overall, I'm really happy with this one. The jasmine and the tea flavor are both there, but not overwhelming.

Jasmine Oolong tea beer.

Next up is the Thai Tea beer. The most striking thing about this one is that the tea turned it a deep, golden orange color. It's hard to see it in the photo, but it's much more orange than the other beers. This one also has a strong aroma, very distinctively Thai tea. The flavor is also there, but it is somewhat subtler than I expect given the aroma. Similar to the previous beer, the tea-adjunct flavor hits first, followed by the tea flavor and tea bitterness, which lingers on the palette.

Thai tea beer. 

Last is the Earl Grey beer. I thought this one would be really powerful owing to the Bergamot in the Earl Grey tea, but it was actually the least pronounced of the three. This may have something to do with the age of the tea—it's pretty old and I wonder if a lot of the flavor has been lost. I don't get very much in the aroma, and there's not much of a flavor up front, but as with the other beers, the tea flavor comes through after a bit and lingers along with a smooth tea bitterness.

Earl Grey tea beer.

Of all the beers, I would definitely drink the Thai tea and the Jasmine Oolong again. I shared this with some other folks and they were pretty happy with it too, so I may wind up scaling this recipe up, perhaps making a 10-gallon batch, splitting it two ways and doing Thai tea in one and Jasmine Oolong in the other. I was really glad that the beer had some residual sweetness before the tea went in because it counterbalanced the tea bitterness very nicely.