I brewed the Yak & Yeti Chai Milk Stout recipe from the May/June 2013 Zymurgy this past weekend. Brew day went great, but I wanted to try something different then the suggested homemade chai extract, which is made by soaking dry chai mix in vodka.
There is a local chai brewer (Bhakti Chai) that sells there product in concentrate, and I would really like to use their blend. It’s got a nice spiciness to it that I think would work really well. Anyways…
How should I go about adding the concentrate? I was thinking of pasteurizing it by bringing it to ~160-170*F and holding for 10ish minutes. Not sure if this is ideal, or if there is something else I should consider…
that would work. I’m not sure it would be absolutely necessary though. Depends on your appetite for risk even below boiling you are going to lose some aromatics in the heating. Although I suppose you could do it in a closed environment with vapor return (the lid on) and you wouldn’t lose much.
I was worried a bit about losing some of the character by heat treating the concentrate. I am tempted to just dump it in without any prep. It’s a pretty strong one (og: 1.081), so there should be enough alcohol in there to ward off bugs…I think!
I’d wonder what the process was for concentration. Was it pasteurized prior to packaging? If so then it should be fine to sanitize the exterior of the container and dump it in. If you’re not sure about the packaging then I’d think about blending it with a small amount of vodka or grain alcohol to get to around 25-30% alcohol to kill off anything that might be living in it. I wouldn’t pasteurize out of fear of losing too much of the aromatics.
THIS is something I had not considered… I will have to check it out.
I emailed them about the pasteurization methods they use, so hopefully I will hear back from them about that.
edit: The “original” concentrate I was planning on using has 13g of sugar (per 1/2 cup), but apparently they make an unsweetened version with no sugar, which I haven’t seen in stores before. If I do go with the concentrate with sugar, do I just subtract the amount of sugar I am using from how much priming sugar I was planning on using? Never ran into this issue before…
[quote]We bottle at 165 degrees which kills the bacteria that enables us to have the 15 week shelf life. I don’t believe you have anything to worry about with the concentrate and sanitation issues as Avery Brewing Co uses it for a seasonal beer they brew and it’s passed all of their internal tests.
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even below boiling you are going to lose some aromatics in the heating. Although I suppose you could do it in a closed environment with vapor return (the lid on) and you wouldn’t lose much.