Tea Beer Experiment

I like beer. I like tea. A while back I watched this episode of Chop & Brew, in which a 10-gallon batch of Belgian Dark Strong Ale is split 4-ways, and each portion gets a different treatment. The favorite seemed to be the third part, which was "dry hopped" with an ounce of Wu Ling Mountain

Three teas, each with very distinct flavors.

black tea for 10 days. I was intrigued. I've toyed with the idea of doing a green tea pale ale, or attempting to clone Elysian's Avatar Jasmine IPA, but it's tough to pull the trigger because I don't know when the best time to add the tea is. During the boil? In secondary? Actually make tea and mix it before packaging? Make a tincture with neutral spirits? There are so many possibilities. I don't want 10 gallons of beer that's painfully astringent or completely absent any tea flavor. I also found several other possible teas I'd like to infuse into beer, specifically Thai tea and Earl Grey. With Thai tea, I'm not trying to recreate Thai iced tea the way some others have. With Earl Grey, I'm just curious what the Bergamot flavor will do. So I'm going to do an experiment, and I'm going to do it in a bag.

Simple, pale grist.

I want a simple base for this beer, to make sure the tea flavors can come through and really be the stars. That means no overpowering roasted malts, light on the hop flavor, and maybe try for a little residual sweetness. I'm basically starting with a very basic pale ale, and then adding some light crystal malt for color and sweetness, and some honey malt for sweetness. Some carapils is just there to help with the body. It's a small batch, around 3 gallons, and I didn't have a lot of time today because both of the kids were out of school and I was home alone with them. I didn't even get started until after I had made them lunch. So, I did a quick brew-in-a-bag (BIAB).

A bag, in which to brew.

For those not familiar, BIAB is a way to do all-grain brewing with a single vessel (hot liquor tank, mash tun, and boil kettle are all one pot). It means a lot less cleanup, and I can do it on the stove instead of holing up in my brewery in the basement. With the addition of a simple $2 nylon paint strainer, you can mash directly in your kettle. When the mash is over, you simply remove the bag and the grains along with it. I didn't have any hops on hand specifically for this, so I used an ounce of homegrown Cascade hops from last year's harvest for both bittering and the (small) later addition. As with the schwarzbier, I figure this will be pretty forgiving with the bitterness, since the tea should add some of its own bitterness.

It's Not Going To Be A Boring Beer!

Batch size: 3.5 gallons (BIAB)
Expected efficiency: 75%
Target OG: 1.051
Target FG: 1.007
Color: 6 SRM 

Grist:

• 5# Gambrinus Pale Malt
• 6 oz. Crystal 20°L
• 4 oz. Honey Malt
• 4 oz. Carapils
• 2 oz. Crystal 60°L

Mash:

• Saccharification - 152°F for 60' at 1.5 qts./lb.
• Remove bag, squeeze the hell out of it, then "sparge" with 6 cups 168°F water

Boil: 60 minutes total, after topping up to 3.5 gallons.

• 0.75 oz. Cascade (Leaf, ??% aa) at 60' to ?? IBU
• 0.25 oz. Cascade (Leaf, ??% aa) at 20' to ?? IBU
• 1 tsp. Irish moss at 20'
• 1/2 tsp. Yeast nutrient at 20'

Fermentation:

• Chill to 65°F, pitch Safale US-05, dry
• When fermentation ends, rack off the trub and divide into three secondary carboys to "dry hop" for 10 days with:
• Jasmine Oolong
• Earl Grey
• Thai Tea
• Crash-cool to 35°F, add some Biofine Clear
• Lager 1 week at 35°F
• Bottle with enough priming sugar for 2.5 volumes of CO₂

Once I had my grain crushed (mill gap set to 0.029"), I brought about 2.25 gallons of water (treated with half of a Campden tablet to neutralize chloramine) up to around 160°F, which apparently wasn't hot enough, because once I dumped the grains in, I had to add a few cups of boiling water to get up to 152°F. I also needed to adjust my mash pH, which started out a little high at 5.71. A few drops of 88% lactic acid brought it down to an acceptable 5.32.

This will do nicely. We'll lose a degree
or two over the hour, anyway.

A milliliter or so of 88% lactic acid later...

I actually had some trouble breaking up all the doughballs that formed, so I wound up just grabbing a whisk, which made short work of them. I will have to remember this trick for the future when I don't want to worry about tearing the bag by mixing too vigorously with my stainless spoon.

Doughballs, begone!

I squeezed the hell out of the bag when the mash was done, using some brewing gloves to protect my hands from the very hot grain. Don't let anyone tell you that squeezing the bag is bad. Squeeze that bag! I then poured 6 cups of 168°F water through the grain to rinse it more, and then recommenced squeezing. The gravity at this point was already in the 1.060s, so I diluted down with another 6 cups of water, because I didn't want the higher gravity to decrease hop utilization. I also just needed more liquid, especially since I'd be boiling some off. I scooped the coagulated proteins off the top as the boil approached, and then added a few drops of Fermcap-S, just to make sure I didn't have a boil-over on the stove. Fun fact: Fermcap-S is just Gas-X (simethicone)! It does the same thing in your gut as it does in the boil or in your fermentor.

During the boil I went out to the freezer to get some hops!

Homegrown!

Still a tad frozen while I measured them out.

Rehydrated with wort!

I wound up tossing in some Irish moss (because I was too lazy to go downstairs and get a Whirlfloc tablet) and a pinch of yeast nutrient along with the 20' hop addition. I also got to use my trusty old copper immersion chiller. It had no problem bringing the wort down to pitching temps quickly, provided I kept stirring the wort. Using whole hops meant that straining into the fermentor was going to be a little different than what I was used to. On the one hand, I didn't need to worry about my strainer clogging with pellet debris. On the other hand, every time a couple of hops would fall into the strainer, I'd get a little bit of splashback.

Sorry, hops. You have to stay behind.

Once I topped up to about 3.5 gallons, my gravity had dropped to 1.044, about 6 or 7 points below where I had intended to be. I definitely wanted to go to 3.5 gallons, though, because there was a lot of break material in the fermentor. I wasn't sure how much of that was going to stick around and I wanted at least a gallon for each tea. I had originally debated between making some tea and pouring it in at bottling, or "dry hopping" with the tea. Because I missed the target gravity, I'm going to just throw the tea leaves into the secondary so as not to add any more water. With the low gravity and low volume (and my laziness and lack of time), I decided not to bother rehydrating the yeast, and just poured it in dry after adding pure O₂. This may have been a mistake because the wort was not warm enough for rehydration. You usually only want to sprinkle the yeast directly into the wort if it is still a bit warm. There may be a long lag time on this batch, we'll have to see.

Yeasties going in dry.

The break material began to settle almost immediately.

I'm excited to split this batch up and see what each of the various teas will do to it. I'm also really curious to see what happens with tea in general. I know what I'm going for, it's just a matter of seeing whether I can get there with this method.