Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/95647
ttention, tea-company owners: Right now a certain quality-oriented culinary category is growing fast, wants to collaborate with Camellia sinensis vendors and can bring your brand to a new swath of consumers. Are we talking about artisan chocolate makers? Cheese mongers? Bicycle- powered pizzerias? Nope. The potential partner is your local craft brewery. Not surprisingly, the folks behind independent brewing companies put a high priority on intriguing flavor nuances and creating products that stand out in a world of corporate monotony. What is a bit unexpected, however, is that many brewmasters are starting to aggressively source specialty-grade leaf and herbs to achieve their goals. "North American craft breweries really like to mess around with stuff," says Joel Manning of Toronto's Mill Street Brewery, which for the last two years has worked with nearby Metropolitan Tea to create a strong-selling Lemon Tea Beer line. "Tea is obviously not part of traditional brewing conventions at all, but it works so well if done right. A well-made beer with a really nice tea in it can be a wonderful thing." Manning isn't the only beer professional to hold that point of view. Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales, a Delaware operation with devotees across America, this year rolled out a brew called Sah'tea, which features a chai blend from Tucson, Ariz.-based Maya Tea. In the Boston area, meanwhile, spunky start-up Night Shift Brewing has taken flight in part by using leaf from Mem Tea Imports to craft a popu- lar Bee Tea Wheat Ale. The trend has even made its way to China, where an ex-pat-owned brewery called Great Leap Brewing regu- larly brings teas into its beers to entice locals to try the still-novel microbrew concept. For tea companies, the time may be right for brewing up beer partnerships. QUALITY REALLY DOES MATTER What may be most exciting about the craft brew scene's recent leaf love is that the leaders of craft breweries are discriminat- ing about their ingredients. That means they're looking for tea providers who can offer options that go above and beyond what brewers may be able to find on a supermarket shelf. In short, they're looking for you. Sam Calagione, owner of Dogfish Head, says he sampled teas from eight different suppliers before choosing Maya. Dogfish Head, like many other brewers pushing small beer forward, has made a name for itself by concocting beers that are intensely flavorful. The brewery wanted a tea to help the Sah'tea product perform along those lines. "We were looking for a blend that had black pepper notes, coriander notes, cardamom notes," Calagione says. That kind of flavor specificity from a beer maker may surprise coffee and tea pros who are used to being the biggest palate dorks in the room. However, as tea companies begin investigat- ing what possibilities lie in the beer spectrum, they'd be wise continued on page 34 Fresh Cup Magazine 33 BEN BECKER COURTESY OF DOGFISH HEAD BREWED ALES