I’m going to be brewing a simple light ale with citrus. I’m going to add 1 oz of dried lemon peel and 1 oz of dried lime peel. I was wondering if people have more success adding these at 5m, flameout, or more of a hopstand/whirlpool with a 15-30m steep?
Recipe will be 6 lbs pilsen DME
1 oz Hallertau (2.5% AA @ 60m)
White Labs Cream Ale Yeast
The best is to use FRESH peel, soaked in vodka for a few hours or overnight, then add just the flavored vodka on bottling day after fermentation is complete. So if you want to try that, you’ve still got time to pick up some fresh fruit.
Otherwise, with the dried peels, I would figure about 5 minutes in the boil, or at flameout, would give just a bit of flavor, and a slight bitterness as well.
Cheers and hope you like the results. Please share when it’s done.
I have had good success with adding zest at the end of the boil or after fermentation has slowed. When added to the fermenter, the character will come through a lot more. I have done a lime/lemongrass blonde that was great when added at the end of the boil but too much when added in the fermenter.
You will get the most control as dmtaylor suggests…
Just brewed a saison with a small amount of lemon zest added with 5 min left in boil. Jury is still out as it is in primary chugging away.
How much did you use? I am planning on this for an upcoming saison.
Adding zest at the end of flameout is okay but it’s very different than adding closer to packaging the beer. The heat of the kettle and the scrubbing effects of primary can destroy some of the subtle, fresh character you would probably rather keep. I have always had the best luck adding fruit, zest, spice or flavors of any kind after primary fermentation is over. If you use a secondary, that’s a good time to add it. If you go primary to keg or bottle, add it at the end of primary for about a week or so. Add the zest to a small amount of vodka to sanitize it. Leave it that way for a day or so and then add it to the beer… leave that for a week and then package it. You will get better, fresh zest flavor this way. Cheers and good luck.
Sorry for the delayed response. I wanted a real subtle addition for this one since I also added an oz of Hallertau Blanc at 0 minutes too and wanted to get a sense for what those hops were like. I only used the zest of 1 large lemon. Not much at all. Just looking to add some light splash of lemon.
I’ve always added fruit peels at flameout. The only thing you get by adding it during the boil over flameout is boiling off some of the flavor. Flameout will still boil out some of the flavors until the wort cools. A whirlpool addition at cooler temperatures would also be fine. I like using fruit peels pre-fermentation to make the compounds available for biotransformation during fermentation. I also like the toned down character caused by some of the boil off at flameout temps.
If you want more of a fresh fruit flavor then the post-fermentation process described above is what you want to do. Be more restrained on this end because you’re not losing flavor to boil off or fermentation and a longer contact period will allow for greater extraction. When in doubt add less, taste and add more if necessary.