Brewing a cream ale. I noticed I have a big crop of tangerines coming in. In SoCal and it’s been 80 which is why I’m choosing this style now. How would you add the fruit? Juice, peel, last 15mins of boil, or into fermenter, etc? Any favorite way?
Brew the beer as normal, ignoring the tangerines for now. When ready to bottle or keg, then zest one or two tangerines, soak the zest in a few ounces of vodka overnight, then add the flavored vodka to the finished beer, and package as normal. Ta-da.
I always add fruit to the secondary with a bit of added sugar or honey if you’re worried about wild yeast pour some 180 degrees F or 70 C water over it and hold for 20 minutes to neutralize the yeast and dissolve sugar. I place this in the bottom of my secondary fermenter and rack the wort in on top of it. Do not stir the action of the ferment will mix everything up with out any danger of oxidation. This is just how I add fruit to beer. Not the only way but I have had good success
I have heard that fermented orange juice (tangerines also, perhaps) taste a lot like vomit. The rind without pith may add some nice flavors and aromas when added as a late boil addition.
No. I’ve used orange juice in a beer before. It was initially odd, but aged into a decent beer.
"I have heard that fermented orange juice (tangerines also, perhaps) taste a lot like vomit. "
Not true, there are enough commercial beers out there now using blood orange, tangerine, etc to refute this idea.
Yeah but they likely use zest, moreso than juice.
Appreciate the correction and information based on direct experience. I imagine the juice is a small-ish percentage of total fermentables?
Also several grapefruit IPAs using both peel and juice. No vomit flavor.
Personally I could see sweet orange juice devolving into some not so great flavors after fermentation. Can’t think of any beers I’ve seen with regular OJ. Lots of other citrus fruit juice for sure.
I have also heard this, some podcast probably. And this thread points out how important it is to say “I heard”. Also important not to hear hearsay and repeat it like it’s personal experience… good on ya.
Most of the good stuff in any citrus fruit is in the zest. Just sayin’. Try this:
- Zest an orange. Set zest aside for now.
- Peel the orange and eat the flesh.
- Now eat the zest, and compare the intensity of the zest vs. the flesh.
;D
Agreed. Maybe eat the pith while you are at it to see why you don’t want that, lol.
It’s also about flavor vs volume. How much flavor is in that little bit of zest compared to how much juice (mostly water) it would take to get that level of flavor. Another thought it flavor vs sugar. Fermentation changes flavor, or masks it, if it’s full of sugar. I would think there’s way more flavor per sugar in zest than in juice.
I have aged a kolsch on tangerines before, just diced them and aged the beer on them uncrushed. It turned out with a great tangerine flavor and aroma. Since only a very small amount of the pith was in contact to the beer you picked up very limited pithy bitterness.