Later on I tried the same thing with four more beers.
The first pair is a pair of Belgian-style ales. My thinking was this: since Belgians already use spices, perhaps the addition of chai spices would be welcome. I chose Ommegang’s Abby Ale and Weyerbacher’s Merry Monks for my tests because they seem to me excellent examples of the style I was looking for. In both I found that the chai spices mixed well enough that I would add much more than two tablespoons to the beers without overwhelming them. Overall the Belgian flavors worked well with the chai to create a unique flavor. I just don’t know if that unique flavor is a super-delicious one.
For the second pair of beers, I chose Great Divide’s English Pale and and Anderson Valley’s Oatmeal Stout. Both beers seemed like good candidates. The pale ale mixed better than I thought. The oatmeal stout was a good mix
Although I didn’t really want to do a chai stout because it seems obvious, in the end I decided that something sorta like the Oatmeal tasted the best with the spices. A stout with low roast and good mouthfeel seemed to taste the best. Next comes the question of how to add the spices. Should I add the chai spices at the end of the boil or should I mix a pre-made chai with the finished beer? I did test batches using both techniques. Both beers had ingredients that would add extra mouthfeel. A few weeks later…
Both beers turned out good: great color, great head, great mouthfeel. I thought that the the mix of pre-made chai and finished beer would turn out the better of the two but it was the stout brewed with chai spices that was the clear winner. The chai/stout mix had no real aroma, chai or otherwise, and tasted mildly like soap. The stout with chai spices had a low chai aroma and a low chai taste. Meh. If I would try to do make a chai stout again I would find some way to intensify the chai aroma and flavor in the beer. I think the chai flavors would also work well in an pale ale like the Denver Pale Ale.
After all this, neither one really seemed worthy of anything more than evening couch sipping so I will fall back to the last good beer I made, a green pepper ale inspired by Wynkoop’s Patti’s Chili Ale.
