earl grey pale ale: tips and advice welcome

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

My small club occasionally does an 'iron chef' like competition where we all brew a beer with a 'mystery ingredient' and then do a blind tasting at a meeting and pass a trophy on the best beer. this time we have the very broad category of 'use tea in your beer'

I was thinking of an early-grey british pale ale, and came across the following recipe from BYO (link and recipe below).

thoughts? i'm worried about having 5 gallons of bad beer around, and i'm thinking of just doing a little 1 gallon stovetop BIAB batch with this. Alternatively, i could just make a standard British pale ale and pull 1gal aside at bottling and add a bit of tea infused water in that.

Can I cold-steep tea in room temp water overnight, similar to coffee and get the flavor without much bitterness?

thanks for any general tips and feedback on the recipe below.

https://beerandbrewing.com/the-bitter-earl-english-pale-ale-recipe/

The BYO article states: "The recipe overshoots the IBU range for the style by a few points to balance the Earl Grey flavor. The color is also dark for the style because of the infusion of the black tea."

ALL-GRAIN

OG: 1.054
FG: 1.014
IBUs: 56
ABV: 5.23%

MALT/GRAIN BILL
10 lb (4.5 kg) floor-malted Maris Otter
1 lb (454 g) UK medium crystal malt (50-60)
1 lb (454 g) UK Cara malt

HOPS SCHEDULE
2 oz (57 g) East Kent Goldings at 60 minutes
0.5 oz (14 g) Fuggles at 30 minutes

0.5 oz (14 g) Fuggles at 15 minutes
0.5 oz (14 g) East Kent Goldings at 15 minutes
1 oz (28 g) Fuggles at 5 minutes
0.5 oz (14 g) East Kent Goldings at 5 minutes

Add
 1.5 oz Earl Grey tea
 at flameout and steep for 8 minutes while cooling the wort.

Mash at 154, ferment WY1968 at 64F.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Can I cold-steep tea in room temp water overnight, similar to coffee and get the flavor without much bitterness?....

The recipe overshoots the IBU range for the style by a few points to balance the Earl Grey flavor.

I don't get the logic here - you're scared of the bitterness of the tea, and then you're adding hop bitterness to compensate? Embrace the Early Grey - it's a great ingredient for beer as it brings both astringency/bitterness from the tea and citrus flavours from the bergamot. It's one of the more common "weird" ingredients in UK beer, a number of the cool kids have one in their core range and eg Northern Monk have said they're reluctant to bring back their tea beer with blood orange for fear of looking like jumping on the bandwagon.

Marble Earl Grey - 6.8% IPA with some crystal & caramalt to offset the astringency and Citra and go for low attenuation for the same reason. Citra & Goldings leaf in the kettle, dry-hopped with Citra pellets. They dry-tea in the fermenter for about 10 days with 5kg tea in a giant teabag. I assume they're putting that in their full 2000l brewlength, so 2.5g/l ?
Yeastie Boys Gunnamatta - 6.5% IPA "with stonefruit and citrus flavours and a long dry finish"
Beavertown Earl Phantom - 4.5% sour, 2 IBU (from hops, relies on the tea),Extra pale malt with malted wheat, Spalt Select and Lemondrop, added lemon
Siren Vermont Tea Party - 3.6% tea version of a collaboration with Hill Farmstead (guess that was after HF moved from Conan to 1318? They call it a celebration of the yeast) with Chinook, Citra, Equinox and Amarillo and added lemon zest
Siren Yulu - 3.6% Update of VTP with Simcoe replacing the Equinox/Ekuanot.

So that Marble article gives you a pretty good steer if you want to go the IPA route. Personally my favourite out of that lot is Vermont Tea Party which I had on gravity from a cask at a festival and it was just glorious - such complexity from a low-ABV beer. I've had Yulu a couple of times in pubs and it's not been nearly as good, but I suspect that it's just been hanging around a bit and you lose all the delicate aromas.

But the above shoould give you some pointers - either go low-ABV or go IPA, use a low-attenuating characterful yeast like Conan or 1318, have some crystal etc if you're going IPA certainly, use citrusy hops (but you can never go wrong with a bit of Goldings, I wouldn't use Fuggles from 2016 or 2017 though) and probably add some actual citrus peel etc for extra citrusiness.

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

I don't get the logic here - you're scared of the bitterness of the tea, and then you're adding hop bitterness to compensate? Embrace the Early Grey - it's a great ingredient for beer as it brings both astringency/bitterness from the tea and citrus flavours from the bergamot. It's one of the more common "weird" ingredients in UK beer, a number of the cool kids have one in their core range and eg Northern Monk have said they're reluctant to bring back their tea beer with blood orange for fear of looking like jumping on the bandwagon.

i'm sorry for the confusion, that sentence "The recipe overshoots the IBU range for the style by a few points to balance the Earl Grey flavor. The color is also dark for the style because of the infusion of the black tea." was actually from the BYO recipe, and I agree it confused me as well, i would think that if the tea adds bitterness then you should be adding less hops.

i'm thinking something like the Siren beer, low ABV some nice citrusy hops with a bit of earl grey, maybe just add some tea leaves as a dry hop charge for a few days before packaging. I also like the idea of adding a bit more citrus to accentuate that with some orange or lemon peel. Thanks for the brainstorming this certainly helped me to see some of the examples of this out there already.

 

[S-Met]

Ask a Brit or check a proper tea forum, but they are particular about the water temp and infusion time to extract the best flavor. I like to let the bag sit steep for long periods and have had some horrific looks. Too long and too hot of steeping time extracts more tannins or something.

As for cold brew, try it with a few bags and see. I would also consider getting one of those bmc with a wide-mouth aluminum bottle and trying a 1-3 day cold brew flavor experiment.

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

As for cold brew, try it with a few bags and see. I would also consider getting one of those bmc with a wide-mouth aluminum bottle and trying a 1-3 day cold brew flavor experiment.

Ooh I like this idea, I have a few flip-top bottles of bitter i made from the fall in my cellar, i'll try and toss in a few leaves of tea and see how it tastes.

 

[TasunkaWitko]

I tried it, adding two bags of Earl Grey that we brought back from Australia right at knock-out (this was for a 1-gallon batch). The grainbill itself was a pre-packaged mix from Brooklyn Brew Shop, but the Earl Grey spin on it was mine, so I was just winging it. The mix came with Nugget hops.

Results were excellent; no worries, no issues, great flavor. Details here, if anyone is interested:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/...-earl-grey-substitute-tips-and-advice.661505/