Beer Forum

Hey All,

About a month ago I decided I wanted to try spicing a brown ale with Chai just to see how it would come out (I was inspired by Gordon Strong's recipe in Radical Brewing). I ended up brewing a Brown Porter, split the batch, and spiced half of it at bottling with a strong Chai tea mixture I had made and chilled down (~6 teabags in about a quart of boiled water).

Well, the lesson learned is don't use Chai Tea if I do it again. The tea leaves are giving too much of a astringent bitterness that makes the spiced version a little unplesant. Next time around, if there is one, I'd use Gordon Strong's Chai mixture (cadamom, ginger, vanilla, etc) instead of trying to use the pre-packaged tea.

Oh well, I'll chalk it up to a learning experience. The good news is the Brown Porter turned out awesome (modified version of the BCS recipe), so I have at least a half a batch of quality brew from all the effort.

Slainte!

-Okt

Maybe try a Roiboos Chai blend, I find Roiboos leaves to be very non astringent.

I make a Chai Milk Stout and I just use a Chai spice vodka tincture. It goes over very well with folks (especially the ladies, curiously).

ChrisKennedy - can you elaborate on the "Chai spice vodka tincture" and how you do it?

-Okt

Chris's tincture method is tried and true, plus you can really hone in on the amount of spicing in the finished product. You probably got an astringency from the Chai tea b/c you boiled the mixture. Next time try just steeping the mixture in preboiled warm water. This will reduce the amount of astringency. Teas should never be boiled anyway b/c they will become astringent (think of boiling your grains...)

Oktober wrote:ChrisKennedy - can you elaborate on the "Chai spice vodka tincture" and how you do it?

-Okt

I take a bottle of cheap vodka, add in about 3-4oz of our house Chai spice mixture, and then dose each 5gal keg with about .4oz of the tincture. It is very potent stuff.

brewinhard wrote:You probably got an astringency from the Chai tea b/c you boiled the mixture. Next time try just steeping the mixture in preboiled warm water.

In my case, the tea was steeped in water that had previously been boiled - the tea itself was never boiled.

Thanks for the info.

-Okt

Resurrecting this thread.

I just started making my own Chai tea this week and the success has led me to want to try a beer with it. This is the spicing I use for a litre or so of tea:

1/2 tablespoon fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 indian cinnamon sticks
4 cardamom pods
1/4 inch ginger
6 cloves

How would I go about adapting this to a beer? I like Chris' idea of doing a tincture with vodka, but I have no idea on the amounts.

Also, what are some good base beer ideas? Brown porter sounds good to me. I would think the ideal base beer would be as ''tea like'' as possible, maybe an amberish English bitter?