Brewing and volatiles analysis of three tea beers indicate a potential interaction between tea components and lager yeast

Green tea, oolong tea and black tea were separately introduced to brew three kinds of tea beers. A model was designed to investigate the tea beer flavour character. Comparison of the volatiles between the sample of tea beer plus water mixture (TBW) and the sample of combination of tea infusion and normal beer (CTB) was accomplished by triangular sensory test and HS-SPME GC–MS analysis. The PCA of GC–MS data not only showed a significant difference between volatile features of each TBW and CTB group, but also suggested some key compounds to distinguish TBW from CTB. The results of GC–MS showed that the relative concentrations of many typical tea volatiles were significantly changed after the brewing process. More interestingly, the behaviour of yeast fermentation was influenced by tea components. A potential interaction between tea components and lager yeast could be suggested.