Tea Wine.

I was at a friend's house yesterday, his mum homebrews as well, she gave me her homebrew books to have a look through, two of the recipes I took were for tea and coffee wines, I noticed they weren't exactly long on the ingredients list, so I thought I'd have a blast. Got it started up a few hours ago, it's happily bubbling away now. Also got a couple of spare demijohns which was a score.

I did one which was basically Earl Grey tea with few raisins and a bit of acid, was OK but you could tell it was from tea if you thought about it.
Recently finished my first try at coffee wine, very pleased with it - suggest you use a high tolerance yeast to make it strong (though you can't get as strong as Tia Maria with just yeast), finish it sweet, and add some vanilla towards the end.

Cheers for the ideas, I've already started them off, so it's a bit late to bother with the high strength yeast, I wouldn't mind seeing what it's like just like this though. My tea wine is just morrison's own brand red label (the recipe actually suggested oolong I think, but oh well)

I was just reading abou this in CJJ's book. sounds interesting. Prob not one i'll try right away but there are plenty of other recipes in there to get me started.

This sounds interesting. I've never tried either, but I got a taste for Tia maria in stout... Long story, a landlord I used to work for would put a shot in his Guinness. If I could brew something that tasted like Tia maria I'd be well happy, any clues on recipes oldbloke?

This is what I did - it didn't go exactly to plan.
It's definitely reminiscent of Tia but not quite there. Maybe a bit more vanilla would help, but getting the ABV up would help more. I'll definitely use a high tolerance yeast next time. It has a slightly oily texture (like Sarah Hugh's Dark Ruby) which I dislike in ale but find OK in wine at this ABV: higher ABV would help with that too.
Despite my distrust of the hydrometer readings, having had a (small) bottle to myself one day I suspect it is in fact about 13%. If it could be made to 18 or more with a different yeast (I have some Gervin 4 on hand for the next try) it would be far better - but it does want to finish sweet, for my taste.


2012-05-19
2lb sugar dissolved in warmed water; 4Tbsp instant coffee added; Cooled a bit while yeast rehydrates
Into demi with 1tsp citric, 1tsp nutrient [NB CJJB recipe says 1tBsp citric, not sure now what I actually did]
Plenty of headspace left for later feeding; Pitched yeast (Gervin D)
2012-05-24 Added 1/2lb sugar dissolved in 1/2l warmed water
2012-06-03 Added 1/2lb sugar dissolved in warmed water
2012-06-11 Added 1/4lb sugar dissolved in 1/4l warmed water
2012-07-07 Removed 250ml and added 4oz sugar in 250ml water.
According to hydrometer was about 12.5% - Dilution reduces to about 11.8%
2012-08-10 1.034
2012-08-22 1.032 (not much drop... temperature correction? really that slow?)
Still very sweet, "strangely moreish"
2012-09-13 Trying to clear and trying to bubble the wrong way, so racked and stabilised.
Added a few drops vanilla. Tastes pretty good! Not too far off Tia Maria. Quite sweet, quite strong.
2012-10-21 Hydrometer now claims only 13%, I reckon it's more.
Seem to have got the vanilla about right, and it's sweet but not too much. Rather nice in fact.
As soon as I have the spare time I'll bottle it: maybe Thursday, possibly tomorrow.
2012-10-27 Bottled. More sorbate&sulphite, JIC. Very tasty.

Cheers Oldbloke. I'll give it a try. What do you use the citric acid for? Preservative?

acid is for well acidity-like found in grapes, balances the flavour otherwise can taste flat and unappealing, a must have ingredient

Yeh, just to balance the flavour. A citric/tartaric/malic mix might be better, but citric alone seems to work OK.

Just racked it, tastes quite good compared to what I was expecting, especially as it is just tea (8 bags of Morrison's Red Label) and the usual suspects. It's 10% so a bit lower than most of what I brew but I don't think I'll bother adding more sugar.

Finally tasted this, my dad turned round to me and said it reminded him of something, after a while of thinking he said Sake, and after hunting down the last of the bottle of sake we happened to have, warming both and tasting both, it did taste fairly similar. I was quite impressed with it actually. Although if I were to brew it again as a general wine I'd throw in some raisins or bananas to give it a bit of body, it's a bit one dimensional drank as a cold white wine. Very drinkable warmed up though.