Sah'tea

It's been a while since I made a sah'tea, and I was feeling a bit like I wanted to make another one, and this is a good beer to make for the first beer of 2018.  I also wanted to take something of a different approach to the juniper and tea additions, boiling them separately to produce a tea, and then adding that tea to the beer just prior to bottling.  This is something I tried with the most recent ginger saison I made.  My hope is that by not adding the juniper and tea during the boil, that a good bit of the flavors won't be reduced by the yeast during fermentation.

Brew Day: 1 Jan 2018

Partial Mash:
8 oz Munich
6 oz rye
2 oz Carapils
4 oz Victory
2 oz CaraMunich
*I'm sure folks are going to have questions about the specific choices I made regarding the malts, but as with several other of the beers I've made, it was more about what I had on-hand.  The same is true with the hops additions (below).

Boil (20 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME
4 oz table sugar

Hops:
4 g Styrian Golding hops (5.7% AA, @ 20 min)
4 g German Perle hops (8.2 % AA, @ 20 min)

Yeast: K97

Addendum, 2 Jan: After what happened with my last beer, and given the fact that I had to put some of my brewing stuff back on the shelves, I checked on the beer.  The yeast seems quite happy, and there were no spontaneous, explosive events this time.  I'll let the fermentation run for about 10 days or so, then rack this into secondary for a bit.

Addendum, 11 Jan: Racked the beer to secondary.

Addendum, 18 Jan: Bottling - Bring 1 cup of water to a boil, with 14 g of crushed juniper berries and two black tea bags.  Boil gently, let steep for a few min, then pass through a strainer to remove the chunks of crushed berries to get 1/2 c. of hot 'tea'. Dissolve 2 1/2 T (1 oz) of table sugar in the tea.  This is the priming solution.  Got six good regular bottles, one flip-top, and 1 1/2 soda bottles; I'll be trying the soda bottles (in particular the partial fill) in two weeks.

Addendum, 7 Feb: Tried one of the soda bottles last night; didn't get much of juniper at all, mostly came out as a dark wheat beer.  So far what I'm finding in this process is that additives such as ginger and juniper berries are just as good, if not better, added to the boil, rather than during bottling.  That is, at least using the procedures I've outlined in my attempts.  It's still good beer, just not what I was looking for, specifically.