Adding tea to a beer. Thoughts on lowering tannin extraction.

Is there a @deadwolfbones in the house? He's had success with green tea in beer.

 

Oh hey!

My experience is fairly limited and I've only added it as a dry hop, so I can't comment on whirlpool additions. The dry hop method worked great for me. I added 75g to a 3ish gallon batch and let it steep at ~55F for 6 days.

I did get a little bit of tannic dryness/bitterness, but the beer I added it to (a pretty simple saison) was lightly hopped to start with, so it actually balanced out quite well.

Next time I'd probably hop the beer a little more and use more tea for less time to get the same tea flavor with a little less tannins.

FWIW, I chose the dry hop method because a pro brewer friend of mine uses it for a beer I really love.

 

I don't have any particular advice on brewing with tea, but I'd make a couple of observations. This is the kind of flaw that you can blend out. It is also the kind of flaw that should age out over time, although given that the underlying beer sounds as though it's best fresh, that may not be helpful to you.

 

Sounds like a delicious beer to me!

The tea definitely added a ton of flavor/aroma to my beer.

(It also added a slight sulfur element to the nose, at least on initial pour. YMMV on that, though.)

There's more info on my tea beer here, if you're interested.

 

Probably adding it to the whirlpool, which is also at steeping temps is where you are picking up all of that astringency.
Also, do note steeping times for teas, you mention several that are extremely delicate and a quick look up on the interhoodles tells me you blew that green tea to smithereens with how you handled it, even before you hit the whirlpool.

 

Google removing tannins from tea. It seems that fining with gelatin helps remove it out. https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/67487/remove-tannins-from-tea-without-removing-caffeine this site has a link to the study, and others seem to have had success with it.

 

I reached out to Ryan Witter Merithew who’s brewed some very successful beers with tea when he was at Siren and also Hill Farmstead. He was rather vague but he said he’s only ever added tea on the cold side and that I’d need to experiment with amountsto truly find out what worked best.

 

@DrewBeechum may have some experience with these issues.

 

Once I made a pretty good beer using Bengal Spice tea (basically orange and cinnamon). I would suggest lowering the hops bill a tad to compensate for the astringency/bitterness of the tea.

Will your tea beer recipe be amazing?? Only one way to find out!! Cheers!

RDWHAHB

Bryan

 

@SFACRKnight is right - I do have some experience. I think not only the hot steeping but using 20% of your final volume of tea is a bit overkill.

The best methods I've used is either cold steeped and then briefly brought to a boil and added to packaging. (I'm paranoid about things riding in on the tea.) Or my favorite is to make a tincture with vodka and tea. My most successful tea beer - the Jasmine Dragon Saison - used 1/2 cup of Jasmine Dragon Pearls in 1 cup of vodka. Let that soak for a week, shaking periodically, strain and add to taste. In that case, I think the tincture worked best to extract the Jasmine flavors/aromas

 

Somehow I thought the word tincture would show up Drew.

 

I'm a simple man - if I can soak it in Vodka, I will. (Also, I think the tincture doesn't extract the tannins in the same way as a long hot water steep for the level of intensity you get)