Chai Wine

[the.fee.fairy]

Undeterred by the ginger beer problem, i have decided to make some Chai wine.

I love chai - abcolutely love it!

So...there's a recipe in CJJ Berry's book 9which i finally managed to buy last week) for tea wine. It calls for 4tbsp tea. He says that spiced tea makes a nice wine. Now, seeing as chai is my favourite spiced tea, i couldn't pass it up!

I've boiled the water, addded the chai (teabags made up to 4tbsp...), and the sugar. Got to wait for it all to cool, then i can get it in the demijohn! They've been empty for a week...

Fingers crossed. I have no idea how its going to taste, but we'll see.

[wyrdwoman]

Thanks for the reminder! I have been meaning to get some more wine started but have been sidetracked by the garden. I will start my own chai wine tonight and hopefully we will both have some yummy booze later in the year.

[the.fee.fairy]

Ok. My full recipe is:

12 chai teabags (twinings). i guessed this amount - i reckon there's a teaspoon in each and i needed 4 tbsp.
2 1/2 lb sugar (i ended up with 1lb white and 1 1/2 lb light brown)
Juice of 2 lemons
1tsp yeast (i use breadmaking yeast, because i wanted to make wine there and then, and not have to wait til i could get to the shop!).
1gall. Water.

I boiled the water and put in the tea bags and the sugar. Then i stirred it to dissolve the sugar and left the whole lot to cool.

then i fished out the teabags, giving them a really good squeeze to get all the flavour out of them.

Then i poured it all into a sterilised demi-john, then put the lemon juice in and stirred it all about a bit. Then i put the teaspoon of yeast in and gave it a good stir again.

Then i fitted the airlock, and left it.

Its now bubbling nicely. Fingers crossed it'll be good!

[wyrdwoman]

I started mine tonight.

I used the tea out of 10 teabags (maybe mine were bigger than yours but it measured out 4 tbsp so thats all that mattered), 1kg sugar, 2 tsps citric acid, 1 tsp yeast nutrient and a hock yeast (I have a collection I got from ebay).

I boiled the tea in the water (serves me right for not reading the recipe properly) then added the sugar and cooled it down. I filtered it through muslin into a demijohn and added the acid, nutrient, and yeast, and put an air lock on. Just waiting for the bubbling to start now!

[the.fee.fairy]

i boiled my teabags in the water! I wanted to get as much flavour out as possible, so i put them in when the water was cold.

Did you take the contents out of your tea bag? i didn't, i figured it would be easier come straining time

[the.fee.fairy]

Here's my wine:



That's a bottle of sugar water next to it, ready to top up. I used some to top up the other wine i've got going at the moment, and i made too much, so i've saved some in another bottle.

[wyrdwoman]

Did you take the contents out of your tea bag? i didn't, i figured it would be easier come straining time

Yep. Don't ask me why though as it would have been easier leaving them in. I sometimes wonder if my brain is shrinking with age.

[the.fee.fairy]

How is your wine going?

i racked mine a coupe of weeks ago and it was a bit sweet, so i've put in some strong wine yeast and nutrient and hopefully, that'll use up the extra sugar. its bubbling again nicely now! Its a nice tea brown colour. i hope it'll stay like that. I think i'll have to rack it into the brown Demojohn i've got to keep the colour. it is in a dark corner though.