NEW PILOT BREW | Faculty x Wize Monkey: Mango Party Cream Ale
We have been brewing up a cool new collaboration with Wize Monkey! The Faculty Brew Team and Wize Monkey is experimenting to make the world’s first Coffee Leaf Tea beer: Mango Party Cream Ale.
February 8th, we experimented with infusing Wize Monkey’s fan-favourite Mango Party tea into a cream ale. The results are awesome.
Wize Monkey, at its simplest, creates delicious tea by upcycling extra coffee plant leaves sourced from Nicaragua. They apply traditional rolling and oxidizing techniques from the tea industry to the coffee leaf, and the result is a uniquely smooth and lightly caffeinated “Coffee Leaf Tea.” They are constantly experimenting with ways Coffee Leaf Tea can be consumed, from cocktails to cookies to kombucha, and now beer!
Let’s talk beer.
For this brew, we went with a smooth and crushable cream ale as our base. Cream ales are stylistically clean, well-attenuated, and refreshing. We went with this style for both the thirst quenching characteristics and to let the delicious mango flavours from the Coffee Leaf Tea shine in this brew. As for hops, we brewed with Mandarina Bavaria to tie in some citrus aromas with the tropical fruit notes from the tea.
We add the Wize Monkey Mango Party tea right at whirlpool much like when you are making a cup at home. We use large mesh bags and let it steep in the beer to extract all the delicious mango flavour. We then remove the tea, add yeast, and let the beer ferment!
Okay, so what is Coffee Leaf Tea?
Coffee Leaf Tea has been traditionally consumed in Ethiopia and Sumatra for over 200 years, but it was never crafted beyond just sun-drying and brewing at the local level. The Vancouver-based founders of Wize Monkey had a hunch that if they applied tea crafting techniques to the leaf, it would reveal interesting flavours and create a whole new sustainable industry for coffee workers. After hundreds of test batches, they created a lightly sweet, full-bodied and smooth infusion with subtle caffeine levels. When they launched it in 2015, they took home the World Tea Expo Best New Product Award!
By using the excess leaves pruned off the plant during the 9-month-long off-season of bean harvesting, they can create delicious Coffee Leaf Tea, help farmers generate year-round income, mitigate seasonal migration, and hunger. Wize Monkey is committed to sharing their innovation with the world as a tasty all-season drink that truly makes a tangible difference in the farmers’ lives.
Special to Coffee Leaf Tea, research has discovered that the uniquely high levels of phytochemicals help support your overall health like your immune, cardiovascular, and nervous systems. Coffee farmers in Ethiopia originally steeped Coffee Leaf Tea because of its strong anti-inflammatory effects. Counterintuitively, the longer you steep Coffee Leaf Tea, the stronger these effects come into play yet without any bitterness. Yes, leave Wize Monkey’s teabag in your cup as long as you want; you can put your steeping on autopilot.
Check out their site here for more details!
When can I taste it?
For this exclusive collaboration, we’re hosting a launch party on Thursday, March 7th at Faculty Brewing. We're tapping the keg at 5pm, swing by with your friends for a first taste of the Mango Party Cream Ale!
Want to learn more about Wize Monkey?
Follow them on social @wizemonkey or check out their website at: https://ca.wizemonkey.com/
