hi everyone, i made a mistake in my last brew: while i was brewing a witbier i decided to open a beer, then a second one, a third one (in the boiling process) so, when i was closing the fermentor after i pitched the yeast… gsus!, i forgot to add the coriander and orange peel!!!
So, my question is, can i make a tea infusion with these spices and then add it to the bottom of the bottling bucket just before i add the sugar and the beer?? should it help to flavor while conditioning in bottle? or just save it for my next brew…
im bottling tomorrow
If I were doing this, I would make the tea with those spices, and add a bit of it to a small glass of the witbier just to make sure it tastes right. I don’t think you will have a problem though.
I think I would leave it out… or at least the orange peel.
The reason is this;
The orange peel in wit beer is not there to add orange flavour. Any citrus flavour should be coming from the corriander. The orange peel is actually there for bitterness and I don’t think you would get much bitterness from a tea.
but if you want to I would try Garc’s suggestion and dose a commercial example as a test first.
I think Morti is talking about bitter orange peel. If you want to know what flavors it will add, you can chew on bitter orange peel (I only recommend doing this once). It tastes like cardboard, only bitter, and just a little bit like orange. Sweet orange peel tastes quite like oranges.
I recently made a wit with 1g/gal of each, bitter orange peel, and coriander. That’s the least amount of spice I’ve ever used, and it turned out the best of any wit I’ve made. It’s easy to overdo the spices.
As for the OP’s situation, I’d probably add the spices to the hot bottling sugar, steep for 10min or so, then bottle.
Too much coriander tastes a lot like soap. The first wit I entered in a contest, I got like a 10, and on my scorecard the judge wrote “You should rinse the dishsoap out of your bottles before bottling.” I think I used a half ounce in a 5 gallon batch.