I know, voided warranty and all....
I'm a huge fan of chai tea... I probably have four cups or so a day, it's kind of ridiculous. So, I decided to make some chai mead, and being relatively new and inexperienced (and somewhat lazy and poor) I opted to make JAO and substitute chai tea for the water.
I made two batches on 28 Feb, in both of which I left out the spices since most of them were in the chai anyway and I made it really, really strong. The other variation was that I used less honey in one batch because I ran out.
#1: 3.5 lbs of honey
#2: 2 lbs, 12 oz
I expected #2 to be dry, but it tastes quite like gasoline, and in #1, it just tastes... weird and the honey and chai flavours aren't blended well at all. I may simply not like chai and mead fermented together. I'm gonna let them age a bit to see how they play out and maybe backsweeten #2 after a while, and probably rack onto some cinnamon and cloves as well.
Any thoughts on what went wrong? Is it the tannins in the tea? Or maybe Odin doesn't like it when I play with the mead recipes like this? ;D
I'm a huge fan of chai tea... I probably have four cups or so a day, it's kind of ridiculous. So, I decided to make some chai mead, and being relatively new and inexperienced (and somewhat lazy and poor) I opted to make JAO and substitute chai tea for the water.
I made two batches on 28 Feb, in both of which I left out the spices since most of them were in the chai anyway and I made it really, really strong. The other variation was that I used less honey in one batch because I ran out.
#1: 3.5 lbs of honey
#2: 2 lbs, 12 oz
I expected #2 to be dry, but it tastes quite like gasoline, and in #1, it just tastes... weird and the honey and chai flavours aren't blended well at all. I may simply not like chai and mead fermented together. I'm gonna let them age a bit to see how they play out and maybe backsweeten #2 after a while, and probably rack onto some cinnamon and cloves as well.
Any thoughts on what went wrong? Is it the tannins in the tea? Or maybe Odin doesn't like it when I play with the mead recipes like this? ;D