Technique to add lemon to Secondary.

I know this is all over the place on here, but I can't find exactly what I'm looking for. I am going to be brewing 10 gallons of Jamils blonde where 1/2 will get strawberries, and the other half will get lemon. That is the reason why I'm not just adding lemon to the boil like I normally would.

Here is a bit of knowledge by BierMuncher on the topic

BierMuncher said:

Grate yourself 1 oz of fresh orange peel, avoiding the white part.

Drop the grated orange peel into a pot with about 1.2 cups of water and cover.

Bring to a quick boil for 5 minutes. Covered

Cool and add to the fermenter.

Boiling the orange peel will help to loosen the essential oils and sterilize everything.

Wait about 3-4 days and taste, then repeat if necessary.

One oz of fresh orange peel should give you a nice hint of zest.

Click to expand...

Now that looks all good and dandy, but that's with orange, not lemon. Would I stick with an entire oz of lemon like he says to do with orange, or should I tone it down a bit.

I've added the zest from 5 medium sized lemons to a blonde ale in the secondary for 7 days. it was a 5 gallon batch. It wasn't too much. You gotta be very careful when you zest them that you don't get the white part though. It will make it very bitter/puckery tasting. The citrus oils give it a lemony aftertaste and smell. I soaked my lemon zest in about 3 oz of vodka overnight before i added it to my secondary.

Just like mentioned above. Id soak the zest in some vodka for a few hours-overnight and then dump it all in secondary for a week or two and then bottle!

Alright, thanks for the advice. Now when you added the lemon zest to your secondary, did you just taste daily it until you achieved the flavor you wanted? I'm thinking that instead of using my microplane for zesting, I'll just use a paring knife to make strips of zest. Did you use a bag or something?

the cook in me is thinking you should stick to the microplane, not the knife. i have been making my living cooking in fine dining for 5 years, and im not sure i could use a paring knife and get just zest without pith. but then again micro planing a half dozen lemons would blow. but whatever you do, dont use a potato peeler, i did a grapefruit beer and got so much pith it was just nasty ha ha

I just waited 7 days in the secondary with the zest. Never tasted it during that time. I added it straight to the secondary, no bag. Again, no_borders is giving you some great advice. stick with that microplane. It doesn't take much of the pith to give it a foul taste.

i added the zest of one medium lemon to the primary after main fermentation had settled. waited a week then bottled... tasted the brew and no lemon flavor at all that i can tell.

when i did the grapefruit beer, i added the zest at flameout, then racked on the pulp in the secondary. i tasted both and it was quite nice, try that next time?

I used about 10 lbs of lemons that I peeled in my 10 gallon batch. I had success with the potato peeler and the beer turned out great. I was going for more of a shandy, tho, and the lemon is very noticeable. Probably 1/2 to 1 lb of zest in total.

I've had good success with citrus peel in the secondary. I use a very sharp vegetable peeler and try to go really shallow. Easier to keep out of the final beer and so much faster than microplane.

I did a lime beer that turned out super. Soaked the zest of 6 limes in CITRUS vodka during fermentation, and soaked the peel from 4 limes in CITRUS vodka (separate jar). Strained about 5 ozs of the vodka holding the zest into a sanitized glass measuring cup, and then about 3 ozs from the vodka holding the peel. Mixed the total 8 ozs into the bottling bucket. Worked beautifully.

I did the lemon zest soaked in vodka for a lemon hefe on a recent batch. I soaked for a week (maybe overkill) but the lemon REALLY came through on the beer. It wasn't my favorite beer, but a couple of my friends thought it was one of the best I ever made and I have requests to make more of it.

I did a blonde ale recently and added one lemone (quartered) into the boil for about 5 minutes and then added the zest of 3 lemons to the secondary for a week, then bottled.

after three weeks in bottles, the lemon was fairly strong and I was worried, but then after 5 weeks, it was a very nice lemon scent and mellow on the flavor, not overpowering the beer at all, but accenting the blonde ale.

I based this on the Centennial Blonde recipie over in the recipie forum.