Spiced with Chai Tea - failure.

[Oktober]

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

[mr x]

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

[ChrisKennedy]

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).

[Oktober]

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

-Okt

[brewinhard]

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...)

[ChrisKennedy]

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.

[Oktober]

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

[brewerTristan]

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?