Tea, the magic ingredient in beer

Always on the lookout for new, innovative opportunities, we jumped at the chance to collaborate with our good friends Moor Beer, some of the first pioneers of craft beer in the UK and the 2017 Guild of Beer Writers Brewer of the year.

Together we created ‘Do it Together’, a Mango Black Tea Pale Ale. Originally supposed to be a one-off celebration beer brewed for the album launch of punk band Berri Txarrak, it was so popular they carried on brewing it. In fact, we’ve heard there’s a fresh batch in the pipeline for Summer – so to celebrate this magic pairing of beer and tea, Ali (our Head of Tea) spoke to Justin Hawke, Head Brewer and owner of Moor Beer, over a couple of cold ones.

Justin is as fanatical about beer as we are about tea (he’s also fanatical about hard core punk and his dog Baz). A Californian who made his way to Bristol via a stint in Germany while stationed there in the army, Justin drank, chatted and learned about beer along the way – experiences which would eventually shape his own beer-making philosophy. Moor Beer came into being in 2007 (the same year Canton was founded), in the days before every supermarket had an aisle of ‘craft beer’. Back then, craft beer just wasn’t appreciated and Justin stubbornly pursued his own vision of what British beer could and should be – often against the odds. His own ‘modern real ale’ combines the haziness of the traditional, unrefined beers he’d fallen in love with in Germany, the strong hop character of the American beers that had become popular when he started home brewing back in San Francisco, and the drinkability of traditional British real ale. Now British beer drinkers have the taste for hoppy, natural craft beer (in large part due to Justin’s stubbornness), but 10 years ago, small-batch craft ales seemed like a radical departure from the big name lagers we’d see in the supermarkets. Not unlike when Jennifer, our founder, decided to start selling obscure Taiwanese teas, packed from her kitchen table.

The process of creating ‘Do It Together’ started back in March 2017 with a tea and beer tasting. Ali and Edgar took a big selection of teas to the brewery, which were then brewed and added to one of Moor’s existing beers (PMA) to give us an idea of which tea would work best with which beer.

At first, Justin was reluctant to consider flavoured tea, but after tasting the rich caramel and tropical notes of Canton Mango Noir (Yunnan Dian Hong flavoured with mango fruit oil), alongside the hoppy, malty ale, he knew it was a winner. After the initial tasting Justin and his team adapted the beer recipe to work with the tea. Using a blend of grains (Golden Promise, Vienna and three different crystal malts) they boosted the body and sweetness of the beer to counteract the astringency of the black tea and selected complementary hops: Mosaic, Azacca, Calypso, Pekko and Cashmere (Cashmere already had natural tea aroma notes). The tea is added to the beer as a concentrate during the late stages of the blend. As with all of Moor’s beers, ‘Do It Together’ is unrefined and secondary conditioned in the can.

So, what’s special about ‘Do It Together’? Well, it’s got subtlety and balance; it’s not just any novelty tea beer (just a great beer that happens to contain great tea). Expect a rich caramel base with tropical mango notes and smooth black tea tannins, which become more apparent as the beer warms. Justin suggests to best appreciate the aroma and flavour of the beer, it should be drunk out of a stemmed glass at around 12°C.