Extract Brewing with Citrus Peel. Your Experience?

[abe max]

I haven't used orange peel but I am currently onto a bit of a mutant wit where I used about 4 tablespoons of orange marmalade, 30 grams of coriander seed, hersbrucker and Hallertau.

The grain was 1.5 kg of wheat, .250g of biscuit, 250g of munich, mashed for an hour at 65C, 2 kg of light dry malt, done up with WB-06.

I think I'll up the marmalade a little more next time but it has turned out very well and I'll do it again for sure!

 

[Gigantorus]

Have heard of others using bottled marmalade jam. The issue with that (so I've heard) is the preservative in the jam could prohibit fermentation. But I reckon it's worth a try.

My next brew will be a marmalade pale ale, using ruby grapefruit, and I'll add zest & juice at flameout and also do a tincture of zest and add 3 days from bottling.

 

[Beamer]

Hi Folks,

My last 2 brews have used citrus peel/zest late in the boil to give a little citrus flavour boost and fragrance.

The first was an American Pale Ale recipe, which I used the peel from 2 oranges and 1 lemon. Turned out nice enough. Learning was ... make sure ALL white pith has been removed from the coloured peel. The pith adds much bitterness.

The second, which I only bottled on Saturday, was my own variation to the Boneyard Grapefruit IPA recipe (attached) concept which was in a Beer & Brewer magazine issue earlier this year. I simply used my go to IPA recipe and added the zest (I used a zesting tool for this, as it doesn't collect any pith) from 5 x ruby grapefruit and 1 x lime and added late in the boil. While bottling I was guzzling this stuff down like there was no tomorrows. It was delicious even in the uncarbonated state - had a nice marmalade character to it.

So having 2 citrus peel brews under my belt I'm seeking experiences from other brewers who have used peel in brews to understand what has worked and what hasn't. I'm sure there is something I haven't considered, which could be useful to me (and others) here.

So give me your learnings, techniques, failures etc.

Cheers,

Pete

Hey Pete,
When using the zester for your citrus skins did you do this straight over you wort at flameout or did you do into into a seperate container and then add to the fermentor?