Pirate Life and Dilmah team up for a tea and biccies beer
Adelaide’s fastest rising star craft brewery has teamed up with major tea producer Dilmah to create what may prove to be the most unique beer of 2020.
SA News
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You know those nights where your friends want to go out for beers but you would rather stay home and have tea and biccies?
Well now you can do both, with Adelaide brewer Pirate Life teaming up with tea brand Dilmah to create the Tea and Biccies Brown Ale.
The collaboration uses Dilmah tea to give the bitterness usually provided by hops, with sweet, rich malt supplying the “biccies” element.
Pirate Life’s resident beer geek Ed Smiles said while it sounded like the perfect tin to crack with your nanna — and it is — it was also a well-balanced, very drinkable example of a brown ale.
“We’re really excited about this beer,” Mr Smiles said.
“The genesis came from a conversation between our founder Mike Cameron and the original founders of Dilmah. They’ve traditionally been a massive disrupter in their industry, and they were looking for someone with a similar ethos to team up with.”
Mr Smiles said Pirate Life’s brewers had dramatically dropped the amount of hops in the beer to make room for the tea and the floral notes and bitterness it brings.
“Out of a 5000-litre brew kit we actually used 100kg infusion of Ceylon tea, and we basically followed the recipe you’d use to make a good pot of tea – correct temperature, correct infusion time,” he said.
“The biccie flavour is what we’re bringing to the table. We chose special malts to give it not only that wonderful brown ale mouth feel and colour but also those sweet molasses biscuit tastes, as opposed to more roasted taste.”
Dilmah chief Dilhan C. Fernando said: “It was only a matter of time, in the land where good tea and good beer are held in high esteem, before Dilmah tea would partner with a very passionate and disruptive team at Pirate Life.”
Tea and Biccies Brown Ale joins a raft of new generation beers being brewed in Adelaide that embrace unusual flavours including Little Bang’s Hibiscus Session Sour and Big Shed’s Golden Gaytime-inspired Golden Stout Time.