20. Brew my own beer

On 10.10.10 Hubby and I set out to brew my first beer. Hubby helped with the heavy lifting, gave me direction and basically told me to pay attention a few times (watching a pot boil for an hour can get kind of boring). A while back at the Southern California Homebrewers Festival I tasted a beer someone had made: Chi Cream Ale. Ever since then I have wanted to try my hand at making it - it was so wonderfully good! The one I tasted was really light and would make a great summer beer but at the same time it had all the hints of fall flavors and spices - nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon. I had asked the brewer what ingredients he used and he told me to use a basic cream ale recipe and then add Trader Joes chi tea bags to the end of the boil. He left me with no accurate measurements, just a general idea. We went to Trader Joes and found their Ruby Red Chi tea in boxes of 20 and bought 4 of them. We figured at 8 ounces of water per tea bag, 80 bags would work for 5 gallons. Strangely enough I had never once tried chi tea so I used one of the bags for a cup of tea so I could judge how strong the flavors were - we ended up using the remaining 79 bags in the brew and added it to the last 10 minutes of the boil as well as kept it in the pot while we cooled everything. Overall it steeped for about 20 minutes. The aroma was amazing! Now we wait for the beer to ferment so I can see how good (or bad) my first brew turned out! I am excited to taste it and so hopeful that it's at least drinkable!!

80 bags of tea

Cleaning out the mash-tun.

Stirring the wort - such a nice aroma!

Adding Hops

Adding the tea bags

And finally a bit of Ginger.