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A TREND ON TAP continued from page 33 opposed to across the country. That's because perhaps even more than in coffee and tea, the locavore move- ment resonates with brew folks. Oxton at Night Shift says his com- China's Great Leap Brewery makes five beers that feature tea. to give brewmasters a bit of respect. Beer might not have the history of tea, but it's ripe for taste exploration, and it just so happens that the tannins and astringency in tea complement those same components in beer. "I actually prefer tea to coffee in beer making," says Mill Street's Manning, who makes brews with both ingredients. "The base bitterness in beer is similar to the underlying bitterness of tea." But also understand that craft breweries are, like you, small businesses looking to get by in competitive marketplaces. Price will certainly be a consideration. "To keep the prices reasonable for a bottle on the shelf, we couldn't buy the nicest green tea they had," says Night Shift Brewing co-founder Michael Oxton, who uses around 14 pounds of Mem Tea's gunpowder offering for each 200-gallon batch of the brewery's Bee Tea product. "But we didn't want a crap green tea either. The gunpowder really stands out flavor-wise, and its pricing isn't prohibitively high." And once an adventurous beer maker decides to incorporate tea into a beer, how do the two components actually come together? Most brewers who have accomplished the feat say they prefer to bring tea into the equation once the beer itself has been created (typically a several-week process in which malted barley is fer- mented and flavored with strategically chosen hops). Tea leaves are then added and cold steeped (at a temperature just above freezing) for around 10 days. If the tea is added earlier, during fermentation, much of the tea's flavor would be lost, notes Manning: "The CO2 produced by the yeast scrubs the volatiles of the tea away." POWER OF PLACE A tea company looking to bring on a brew partner would be smart to look at beer establishments located across town as 34 Tea Almanac 2013 pany incorporates local chocolate, local herbs and local habanero pep- pers into different beers—and he and his co-founders turned to Mem Tea Imports partly because the tea company's offices were located down the block from where he and his pals were living when they started experimenting with unique brews. "Why not support local businesses?" Oxton asks. "You can talk about it and people know who your partners are. And from a buyer's standpoint, when it's a local place, we can go see the quality and assess ourselves how good it is." It's also worth noting that in many cases, craft brewers turn to tea companies to help bring a taste of locality to the beers themselves. Tucson-based Borderlands Brewing Company also partners with Maya Tea, but it sources primarily hibiscus, not actual tea leaves. Borderlands uses the herb to create a beer that echoes the agua de jamaica beverage that brewery owner Blake Collins regularly comes across at local Mexican eateries. "I thought it would be great to take that note and transform it into something different," Collins says. "I want to make it sophisticated and make someone say, 'That's familiar to me, but it's being shown in a different light.'" Tapping into history and place has also been key for China's Great Leap Brewing, a craft beer company started several years ago in Beijing by Ohio native Carl Setzer. He had moved to China for IT work but missed American small-batch brewing and even- tually started his own operation. Part of his strategy to appeal to Chinese consumers has been to incorporate ingredients that are familiar to the Chinese palate—things like the infamously mouth- numbing Sichuan peppercorn, organic date honey and tea. Great Leap currently has five beers that feature the leaf, most recently rolling out a Yunnan Amber in collaboration with a Shanghai brewery called Boxing Cat. The beer incorporates a black tea called Dianhong, which was sourced through contacts of Setzer's who had access to quality-focused gardens in China's Yunnan region. "We have become known for incorporating local ingredients and flavors," Setzer says. "Many of our customers come in specifically to try beers with tea or other Chinese flavorings." THE PAYOFF When it comes to beer partnerships, a tea company shouldn't exactly expect piles of cash to start pouring in. It's always nice continued on page 36 ELIZABETH PHUNG