Jai Guru Deva Yum

Coming from my successful spice-infused Winter Ale, I wanted to continue playing with non-beer flavors in beer. With its grassy, fruity, and floral flavors, east-Asian Jasmine Green Tea seemed the natural choice.

Jasmine Green Tea is made by mixing normal green tea leaves with the dried flowers of the jasmine plant.

Grain ingredients:

• Belgian pale malt

I guess a picture of that is not necessary.

Oops! I forgot to stock proper grains. I guess I'll make my own. I started with three pounds of said Belgian pale malt. I began mashing 2.5 lbs of it normally. The other half pound I placed in a medium pot with enough water to saturate the grains. I cooked this on medium heat in order to caramelize the grains. As the water dried up, I waited until it began to smell toasty, then added more water and stirred it up. The goal is to darken the grains and create the complex flavors that you find in caramel malts. Once it was caramelized to my (amateur) liking I added more water, scraped the bottom of the pot, and added the grain and liquid to the main mash. To be safe, I also caramelized 1/2 cup of sugar and added that to the mash.



Yadda yadda yadda.

First-Wort-Hop with 1/5 oz of Cascade hops. Boil 1/10 oz of some very potent Chinook hops for 60 minutes. Boil 1/2 oz Cascade for 10 minutes. Cold hop another 1/2 oz Cascade.

Now brew some jasmine tea. I brewed about 3 oz loose tea in 1 quart of water, steeped for three minutes, strained, and cooled the tea. I figured it would be best not to boil the leaves so I added the tea to the cooled and strained wort once it was ready for fermentation. I also over-brewed the first batch of tea. It was extremely bitter and wholly unsuitable for beer. The second batch was fine. Here's what it looks like before fermentation:



And now after primary and secondary fermentation, as well as a good rest in my "Beer cellar"...

Appearance: On the amber side of golden. Crystal clear. Vigorous fine bubbles. Pours a thin, white head.

Aroma: Smells like cheap beer with hints of honey and flowers.

Flavor: It initially tastes like a basic pale ale that has been minimally hopped. The flavor almost immediately transitions to the piney and lemon zest characteristics from the hops. That quickly clears up to reveal a hint of both green tea and jasmine. If you didn't know that the beer was infused with jasmine green tea, you would probably have trouble deciphering these flavors. The tea flavors linger longer than the first two phases as the beer eases into a honey and melon finish.

Mouthfeel: Clean and light like a fine session ale.

Drinkability: It has a slight hint of that flavor that made the Gumballhead-type-beer undrinkable and the first Pilsner-style a bit off. If not for that, this would be ultimately drinkable - light and refreshing enough for summer but rich and flavorful enough for winter.

Prost!