Spiced with Chai Tea - failure.

[jwatkins56550]

Ive made this beer...I came across some loose leaf vanilla chai tea that I loved, and figured I would try this recipe out. Well it turned out okay at first, but after aging it really tasted like kind of old vanilla coca cola. It was very odd, and ended up being a dumper.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

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

I think the problem might have been making a hot tea and chilling it. Have you tried cold brewing the tea?

[Spurtrax]

I once added several boxes of organic liquid chai tea concentrate to a brown ale at bottling and the results I had was it caused my beer to overcarbinate with no chai tase at all.

[brewerTristan]

Ive made this beer...I came across some loose leaf vanilla chai tea that I loved, and figured I would try this recipe out. Well it turned out okay at first, but after aging it really tasted like kind of old vanilla coca cola. It was very odd, and ended up being a dumper.

I think the tea should be left out altogether. Making a spice mixture seems like the best option.