Brewing with tea leaves for masala chai and green tea beers

What tea brings to beer

Tea leaves contain aroma compounds, caffeine and tannins, a family of polyphenols that give tea its dry, gripping feel. In a cup of chai, milk softens the tannins. In beer there is no milk, so tannins land on the palate directly. Beer already has its own polyphenols from malt husks and hops, so tea adds to a load that is already there.

The aim is to extract as much aroma as possible while keeping tannin extraction low. Time and temperature control that balance.

Choosing the tea

• Assam: strong, malty, brisk. CTC Assam is the everyday chai tea. It suits a brown ale, porter or a chai spiced amber.
• Darjeeling: lighter, floral and muscatel. Best in a pale beer where its delicate aroma can show, such as a blonde ale or saison.
• Nilgiri: bright and fragrant with less astringency than Assam. A forgiving choice.
• Green tea: grassy, vegetal and easy to make bitter. Pairs well with a light wheat beer or a lager.

Use whole leaf or good quality CTC rather than dusty tea bags, which extract tannins very quickly.

Three ways to add tea

Hot steep at flameout. Cool the wort to the right temperature for the tea, add the leaves in a bag and steep briefly. For black tea, 90 to 95 °C for three to five minutes. For green tea, 75 to 80 °C for two or three minutes. Remove the bag and chill.

Separate tea concentrate. Brew strong tea in water, cool it and add it to the fermenter or at bottling. This gives the most control, because you can taste and blend before committing.

Cold steep in the fermenter. Add tea leaves to the beer after fermentation, much like a dry hop, for one to three days. Cold extraction pulls aroma with fewer tannins. It is the gentlest method and works especially well for green tea and Darjeeling.

As a starting point, use about 1 to 3 g of tea per litre of beer, at the lower end for green tea. Taste before you add more: you can always add, but you cannot take tannins out.

Building a masala chai beer

Masala chai is tea plus spices: usually cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, clove and black pepper, sometimes fennel or nutmeg. Each spice behaves differently in beer.

• Cardamom is aromatic and fades fast. Crack the pods and add late.
• Ginger is pungent and builds heat. Fresh ginger is brighter than dried.
• Cinnamon works best as cassia bark, which is what most Indian kitchens use.
• Clove overwhelms quickly. One or two buds per 20 litres can be plenty.
• Black pepper adds a gentle tingle on the finish.

Make a spice tea separately, taste it diluted in a glass of the base beer and adjust before dosing the batch. Our guide to brewing with Indian spices covers dosing in more detail.

For the creamy body of chai, a milk stout style base works well. Lactose is a milk sugar that brewer's yeast cannot ferment, so 250 to 500 g in 20 litres leaves sweetness and body. Note the lactose on any label or menu, since some people need to avoid it.

Base beers that work

• Chai brown ale or porter: Assam tea, masala spices, a little lactose. Malt and roast carry the tea.
• Darjeeling blonde: light malt, gentle hops, cold-steeped Darjeeling at the end.
• Green tea lager or wheat beer: clean, low bitterness base and a very light touch of green tea.

Keep hop bitterness low in tea beers. Hop bitterness and tea tannins stack together. A beer that is moderately bitter before the tea can become harsh after it.

Common problems

Too astringent: tea steeped too hot or too long. Next time cut the time, lower the temperature or switch to a cold steep.

Medicinal or smoky: some smoked teas taste phenolic in beer, which can read as a fault. Our guide to phenolic off flavours explains how to tell intended spice from a problem.

Aroma fades quickly: tea aroma, like hop aroma, is volatile. Keep the beer cold and drink it fresh.

Tea beers are a good lesson in extraction: how temperature, time and contact affect what you pull out of an ingredient. The same principles apply to hops, coffee, spices and fruit.