30 days later, I cracked open a fliptop and poured a glass. It's mellowed a bit, but still isn't great. It's not bad exactly, but it still isn't something I would drink readily. A few nights ago I picked up a spare Brita pitcher complete with charcoal filter in the hopes I could pull out some of the sour taste. Yeah, that just wasted $25 and an hour or so pouring the stuff through. I have 9 liters of the stuff laying around so I figured it would be a fun time to run a few experiments, strictly for scientific purposes. It really had nothing to do with me bored in the kitchen earlier. At least, that's the story I'll stick with.
I've been having fun lately making small batches of meads and ciders. So what little bit of knowledge of homebrewing has increased tremendously over the last few months. But I'm still very much a novice. As such, I turn to the world wide web for inspiration and recipes. Time and time again I found mead and cider recipes asking for black tea (as a source of tannins), or jasmine tea, or any of a long list of readily available tea leaves. Tonight's experiment would begin with black tea, and pu-ehr tea.
Into one bottle (they are 1-liter fliptops from Ikea and run about $2 each, I've stocked up heavily on them over the last month or two and highly recommend them) went 4 teabags worth of black tea. Into the second bottle went an equivalent portion of pu-ehr tea. Where I decided that 4 teabags worth would be a good starting point? I just guessed. But as long as I say it's in the name of science, I get a few points for creativity right?
On the left is the "clear" sake without any tea added. In the center is the black tea. And on the right is the pu-ehr tea. I'll give it a few weeks and see if anything is worthy of note.
I'm sorry to hear that this batch didn't turn out for you, Brian. Any idea where it went wrong? Too warm of a fermentation temperature, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteAs long as you're getting creative and not just dumping the batch, you might also consider turning it into homemade rice wine vinegar. You can either buy a vinegar mother at your LHBS or try and get some wild critters to do the deed for you. Rice wine vinegar made from sake is more bitter than the store-bought kind (which is actually kind of sweet), but I find it works well in most recipes calling for either rice vinegar or white wine vinegar.
I think it was the brew temperature that made it sour. The temperature was starting to warm up in Dallas when I started this batch, so we would have days in the 80's and nights in the 30's. I figured keeping it indoors at a steady 68 would be better than the higher temps reached during the days.
ReplyDeleteAnd there is no way I'll dump this batch. I was considering making rice vinegar in fact from at least 1 liter. I have a trip coming up soon for more stuff at my LHBS and will most definitely look into a vinegar mother.
And I still haven't given up hope yet on this stuff. It tastes fantastic with a splash of grapefruit juice. But I would still rather sake flavored sake. And this time around was a world of improvement over the first one.
Yow! Yeah, 68ºF is still way too high. Do you have any way to keep the temp down in the low to mid 50's?
ReplyDeleteWell stay tuned. Tim picked up a small ice cream freezer and mounted a temperature regulator on it recently. So keeping it at a steady 50-55 degrees will be really easy soon. He's also planning on posting instructions how he did it. So until then, I'll keep playing with mead and cider. Well, I do have a small test batch of sake coming up soon, I just need to have more counter space clear for this next experiment.
ReplyDeleteWoohoo! Can't wait to see it!
ReplyDelete