The Barley Tea Party

The Barley Tea Party I embarked on an exploration of barley tea as a project in the COVID lock-down of 2020. I created this page as a place to house descriptions, recipes, etc.

This is only about home brewing barley tea.

Xocolatl Barley Tea2 Tbsp 2-Row Malt1 Tbsp Chocolate Malt1 Tbsp 80L Crystal Malt1 tsp black barley1 Tbsp cacao nibsCinna...
06/04/2020

Xocolatl Barley Tea

2 Tbsp 2-Row Malt
1 Tbsp Chocolate Malt
1 Tbsp 80L Crystal Malt
1 tsp black barley
1 Tbsp cacao nibs
Cinnamon to taste (I used .5 - 1 tsp and both were strong, but not overpowering.)

Optional: Ancho chili powder to taste (don't over-do it)

4 cups hot (3.5 min in 1200W microwave) filtered water – steaming, not boiling.

Stir the barley into the water and let stand for one hour. Strain the tea through a mesh strainer if you want more of the protein and small pieces of barley (basically fiber) in the tea. Use a coffee filter for a clearer tea. This will also have bits of cacao nibs and motes of cinnamon, so there are advantages to a paper filter strain here.

Notes: This went very well with milk and I really enjoyed it with vanilla protein powder as a post-workout drink. It has a nice flavor from the cacao nibs and roasted malts but with a balanced sweetness to it. Xocolatl is not everyone's cup of tea, but I was very happy with this one.

Faux Coffee Barley Tea:2 Tbsp 2-Row Malt2 tsp Chocolate Malt2 tsp Kilned Coffee Malt or Black Patent Malt1 tsp Black Bar...
05/28/2020

Faux Coffee Barley Tea:

2 Tbsp 2-Row Malt
2 tsp Chocolate Malt
2 tsp Kilned Coffee Malt or Black Patent Malt
1 tsp Black Barley
2 cups hot (3.5 min in 1200W microwave) filtered water – steaming, not boiling.

Stir the barley into the water and let stand for one hour. Strain the tea through a mesh strainer if you want more of the protein and small pieces of barley (basically fiber) in the tea. Use a coffee filter for a clearer tea.

Notes: Whoa. Very different from the base tea. The roasty bitterness of the dark malts makes this a very different drink. The dark brown color looks like coffee and the roasted malt notes give it some of the roast coffee taste, but the notable barley sweetness is still there. This is a lot richer and more interesting from a flavor point of view. It is still clearly barley tea, but the sweet, roasted character was quite nice.

Red Barley Tea:2 Tbsp 2-Row Malt1 tsp 80L Crystal Malt2 cups hot (3.5 min in 1200W microwave) filtered water – steaming,...
05/28/2020

Red Barley Tea:
2 Tbsp 2-Row Malt
1 tsp 80L Crystal Malt
2 cups hot (3.5 min in 1200W microwave) filtered water – steaming, not boiling.

Stir the barley into the water and let stand for one hour. Strain the tea through a mesh strainer if you want more of the protein and small pieces of barley (basically fiber) in the tea. Use a coffee filter for a clearer tea.

Notes: Still pretty simple. The mild caramel flavor of the crystal malt is apparent as this tastes noticeably sweeter than the base tea and has more body to it. For those not familiar with brewing 80L refers roughly to how dark the malt is. 80L is a middling caramel tea. The crystal malt is a nice mix with fruit additive like orange and apricot.

Base Barley Tea:3 Tbsp 2-Row Malted Barley2 cups hot (3.5 min in 1200W microwave) filtered water – steaming, not boiling...
05/28/2020

Base Barley Tea:

3 Tbsp 2-Row Malted Barley
2 cups hot (3.5 min in 1200W microwave) filtered water – steaming, not boiling.

Stir the barley into the water and let stand for one hour. Strain the tea through a mesh strainer if you want more of the protein and small pieces of barley (basically fiber) in the tea. Use a coffee filter for a clearer tea.

Notes:
Very simple. It tastes exactly like you’d expect barley in boiled water to taste. If you are familiar with the non-roasted barley teas consumed in Korea and Japan, this will taste like a sweeter version of those.

Base Barley Tea Malts:
I tested the same base barley tea recipe with several different brewing malts:

2 Row:
The basic American standard base malt for typical beers like pale ales. The mildest of the flavor profiles I tried.

Biscuit Malt:
A classic British malt style that is known for its “bready” character.

Vienna Malt:
A classic base malt in German brewing

Put simply, there is a difference in flavor, but it is a lot easier to detect if you are looking for it than if you are just making a basic barley tea. If you know your beers, you will recognize the differences, but if you are not a beer person, you will mostly taste the basic flavor of barley. Given the much lower cost of 2 Row, I’d recommend that as your basic barley tea starter. All three malts mix well with other flavors.

Basic barley tea in a cup. This post is how to brew the barley tea, so it is more about process than about the recipe.T...
05/28/2020

Basic barley tea in a cup. This post is how to brew the barley tea, so it is more about process than about the recipe.

This is the following recipe:

3 Tbsp 2-row malted barley
2 cups water

Heat the 2 cups water for 3 min 30 sec in the microwave. It should be steaming, but NOT boiling.

This is making a concentrated barley tea.

You will want to stir this mix periodically as it cools.

As it cools you will notice the "break" forming above the grains. This is a set of non-water soluble proteins and carbohydrates. If you were brewing beer, you'd care about these. But in barley tea the only impact will be on how clear your tea is. If you want a clear tea, you can run the tea through a paper coffee filter. I use a metal mesh copper filter to remove the barley particles, but that leaves more of the break in place.
If you like a stronger tea, you can leave it as a pint of strong tea. I liked this basic version best as a base for mixing with other things, so I strain the pint of tea into a 32oz container and add water. The picture with the pink lid is that mixture with its sediment on the bottom.
The break will also settle when it cools in the fridge, so you will have a sediment on the bottom of the container. It can be removed with a coffee filter or (less precisely) with slow pouring.
After straining and mixing with water to fit your taste you have barley tea. It MUST be refrigerated if you want to store it. Properly stored in a sealed container in the fridge it keeps for several days with no loss of flavor.
I recommend the use of canning jars because you can pour and strain hot if you like. They can be found at most grocery stores. Amazon has numerous plastic lids for easy cleaning. I recommend getting a set with silicone gaskets to ensure a good seal.

05/23/2020

What to do with Trub?

One thing you will notice is that you get sediment in these mixtures. In brewing it is called “trub” and it contains non-soluble protein and carbs. In brewing beer this would also contain hop particles and other byproducts that can be a problem for the brewer if not handled right.

For tea, trub is not a big deal. It can be stirred (or shaken) up and consumed with the tea. It can also be removed with a coffee filter. Either way, it will have a relatively minor impact on taste and is fine to drink.

05/23/2020

“Spent Grains”
What to do with the barley when you are done making the drinks:
Barley used in the process of making the drinks I am experimenting with is still good for lots of other uses. You can throw it away, but it is a waste of good food value.

Hot water removes soluble carbohydrates and proteins, but it leaves lots of non-soluble ones. The “spent grains” are perfectly edible. There are a ton of spent grain recipes on the internet in the homebrewing community. Better yet, homebrewers usually have 10-20 pounds of the stuff. You will have a lot less. The type of barley used will impact the flavors, but you can reuse them in a lot of different things. The simplest is cereal. You can add the spent grains to any typical cereal, hot or cold. The one thing to be sure of is that you store them properly. Spent grains should ideally be frozen, but at least refrigerated. Sort the grains into single-serving sizes in small, freezable, reusable containers for simplest use. Alternatively, you can dehydrate the grains by spreading them on a cookie sheet in the oven turned on the lowest possible setting to dry them out. But it is a lot easier to leave them wet and just mix them in. Details can be found on numerous homebrewing sites.

Spices, flowers, etc. will change how you can use the leftovers. Not all are great for eating.

05/23/2020

Varieties of Barley Teas

Barley tea is actually very common. Boil water add barley and let it steep. Not a complicated. There are many, many recipes for barley teas that are aimed at producing the more diluted version popular in many countries. These are very common, and you could apply the basic recipe ideas that I am crafting here to those if you wanted to.

What I am doing is different. I am trying to give the benefits that come from the more concentrated barley found in beer. That means that I am building recipes with a higher ratio of barley to water. So, where a basic barley tea recipe might say to use 3tbsp barley in 2 liters of water, I will use several times that.

The reality is that this project is about making drinks that taste good, so the concentration level can be adjusted to taste with relatively little effort.

05/23/2020

I was asked if it was true that low-alcohol beer was good for helping promote healthy lactation in new moms. I had read about the old adage about Guinness being good for nursing moms. I knew that a variety of low-alcohol beers had been brewed specifically for nursing moms before Prohibition. I even vaguely remember that at least one of those beers was available as medicinal alcohol during Prohibition. So, there were legends about this, but was there anything to it?

I did a bit of research (Hey Google…) and it turns out that there is actually some research on this. First off, there are people who think barley tea cures everything that ails humans. It doesn't. Secondly, almost every culture that ever got access to barley or similar grains made teas out of them. So... many... kinds of teas.

Most importantly, In the 70’s there was a research project on the advice given to new moms. The researchers were horrified to find that 40% of American doctors (mostly outside of major cities) advised new moms to drink a low-alcohol beer to aid in lactation. That spurred research intended to show that this was a horrible, medieval idea that should be stopped immediately. These studies actually ended up showing that things were a lot more complicated.

It turns out that the long-chain carbohydrates and enzymes in malted barley actually do have an effect in promoting healthy lactation. It varies widely in individuals, but there were no downside effects from the barley as long as the mom was not allergic to it. Similar results were found for the use of oats, but oats lack the key enzyme that barley had.

The problem was that alcohol is not a good thing for nursing moms if consumed anywhere near the time that the child actually nursed.

As an avid homebrewer, this opens an interesting door for a new project. The local homebrew shop has about a hundred kinds of malted barley to choose from. These vary widely in flavor. Malted barley is higher than unmalted barley in all the things the studies show matter. I also have access to boatload of other flavorings like birch bark, orange peel, all manner of teas, honey, etc.

Can I homebrew barley and oat teas that maximize the long-chain carbs and enzymes the studies say aid in lactation that also offer a nice range of tastes?

Alcohol-free, home-brewed lactation aids for people who don’t like beer.

Challenge accepted.

And why not create a page to share the results?

Key things:
I am not selling anything. I am just posting results of these experiments and any recipes that seem to work.
I make absolutely no claims about the health benefits of barley tea, I'm not that kind of Doctor.

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San Diego, CA

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