Tea is the most popular soft drink in the world while beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage on Earth. Given how many adjuncts — non-traditional ingredients beyond malt and hops — are used in craft brewing, it’s almost puzzling how uncommon tea-infused beers are. Wild Ride Brew’s head brewer, Matt Katakura, tastefully bucks that trend.
When brewers commonly reveal how many pounds of hops per barrel are used in a recipe, Katakura disclosed that he added 11 pounds of tea (a combination of black teas from India and China) in his latest liquid libation, Tea with Miss Bee. It also saw additions of honey and lemon to accentuate a nice cuppa tea, but the beer — now on tap at Wild Ride’s Redmond and Prineville taprooms — is an elegant, refreshing blonde ale that is delicate in flavor yet bold in approach.
“I really like to experiment with flavors on an extra small scale to make sure that the flavors that I want to use will work together,” says Katakura, “even though it sounds like they should be an obvious combination.”
This isn’t to say every idea works. Over the years, some brewers have deigned to add ghost peppers, bull testes, solidified whale vomit, and a plethora of stunt adjuncts into beer. But sensical flavorings from fruit to spices are popular because their contributions have proved popular. Yet tea rarely steps into the spotlight.
Tea indeed steeped into the brewery spotlight a dozen years ago at a “Tea Beer Fest” held in Eugene with a dozen Oregon breweries composing recipes for that occasion. And back in 1995, Mt. Hood Brewing conjured up a tea beer that potentially marked the first such example in the craft beer era. But examples are few and far between.
The floral notes, augmented by natural tannins in tea leaves, bring Wild Ride’s beer into an experimental yet approachable realm. Katakura, who has been with Wild Ride for six years, has brewed tea beers at Wild Ride before as well as previous breweries he’s worked at. He recalls his first attempt was a pilsner that incorporated Broken Orange Pekoe tea. He described it as, “A crisp lager with really big floral notes…but still a fairly mild drink…I have also had experiences with brewing smaller test batches into sour beer with both some success and some failure.”
From green tea infused IPAs to Earl grey imbued saisons, there’s a wide palate and colorful palette of flavors available to brewers. Katakura remarks, “I feel that, depending on the type of tea used, and the amount used, a light base results in a more flavor-explosive and tea-expressive beer, especially when using tea that isn’t flavored with herbs. Stronger teas that actually have herbs or oils added, like Earl Grey, or lavender, even, tend to be overpowering and really need to be used with respect and restraint.”
And that’s half the battle. Just like tea varieties and beer styles, everyone has their own preferences. That ought to set the stage for even wider exploration of the specific direction in brewing. Even within the one example of Wild Ride’s Tea with Miss Bee, Katakura acknowledges, “A few people seem to think it is very strong, and a lot seem to think it could use more tea. I personally think I could have used a touch more, but with the right kind of food, I feel brings the tea to the forefront of the tastebuds and it really is a refreshing beer with the addition of lemon and honey.”
Whether Wild Ride, or other area breweries, will create more beers in this direction, is uncertain, but while I’m unable to figuratively read the tea leaves on this issue, I hope we’re able to cozy up to more offerings befitting the onset of fall.
This article appears in the Source September 18, 2025.
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