Experiment with first batch? Adding citrus flavor to a pale lager

I received one of those Mr. Beer kits for Christmas, and I'm excited to try it.

The kit my girlfriend bought unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, because it's hard to disappoint low expectations) contains their "American Light Lager" malt mix. I'm expecting Budweiser--not my ideal type of beer. Since Mr. Beer uses the add-table-sugar-to-the-bottle conditioning method, I thought about adding some sort of food-grade essential citrus oil to some of the bottles as an experiment. The idea would be to add a drop to four bottles after the fermentation stage and see how it turns out.

Thoughts? Maybe it's not a good idea to experiment on the first batch, but I thought it might be OK if I only tried this on half of the bottles. Also, I've never heard of citrus with a light lager before.

After reading some of the forums, I've also thought about adding corn sugar instead of table sugar to half of the bottles as a second experiment.

Excuse me if I sound a bit brief, but I had just typed up a response to you only to have my IPad POS refresh the tab and delete everything. Tech developers are idiots sometimes.

Anyway, welcome to the world of brewing and HBT. I'm going to respond out of the assumption that you'll probably get into this hobby based on the fact that you're A here on HBT, B have the user name Most ABVs, and C you're already experimenting.

That said, I first recommend you pick up a decent brewing book. Charlie Papazian and John Palmer come to mind. You'll most likely want to swing by your local home brew store for a few other reasons, or just pick one up online.

I find it a bit odd that they would make a Lager beginner kit. Not sure what kind of yeast is in there, but you'll want to make sure you understand that Lagers are fermented cold (50 degrees or so) and typically need a diacetyl rest where you bump the temp back up for 2-4 days or so to get rid of butter like off flavors. Then if you really want to wrap it up properly a lager is typically crashed cold for at least a few weeks before consuming to condition and smooth it out. But here we have a lite lager, and I'm pretty sure Bud manages to get their bottles out the door in just over two weeks, so I suppose it all depends on what type of product quality you want to end up with.
Here's my recommendation to you; chances are the yeast in that kit is old already. You'll want to consider replacing it with fresh yeast, and if you decide to do that, you may as well pick up some San Francisco Lager yeast WLP810. This will give you lager qualities, but this strain can be fermented at higher temps without the need for the diacetyl rest, so it's easier all around for a first time brewer, especially when you probably don't have the ability to control your temps (yet).

With regards to the bottling sugar, this really only gets added to the beer to create co2 in the bottles, but not for additional flavor profile. Really whatever you have on hand will do for this purpose, although different sugars require different amounts to be added to attain the carbonation you want.

I'm not so sure about the citrus oil; if it's actually oil based I would stay away from it. Oil and beer are no friends. Oil may end up killing your head retention and could leave an undesirable slick on the top of the beer. If it's not oil based, then go for it!

So, in summary, you may want to focus your efforts on the fermentation of this more so than the experimenting. Best way to dislike a hobby from the outset is to end up with a $hitty result the very first time! Take your time in other words and consider writing down each step for yourself before starting as a sort of dry run.

If you really want to play with it and try and get away from the lite bodied bland aspect of the style you could consider picking up some darker LME or DME (liquid/dry malt extract) and adding that in. Talk to your LHBS (local home brew store) about it and see what they think! Oh, and get used to the abbreviations!

Cheers! Don't let us anal retentive folks get you worked up though... enjoy it!

I second the comment about oil and head retention. For more info on that one, do a search here for "olive oil". Some brewers use it in lieu of oxygenating their wort prior to adding (pitching) the yeast. Regarding the oxygenation, be sure to do some reading here about how to prepare your yeast and how to add oxygen to your wort (can be done by vigorous stirring or shaking of the bucket. You can also do what I do and get an aquarium air pump, some tubing and an air stone (I have an 8 inch stone). Sanitize the stone and tubing, and then pump air into the wort for a few minutes. Yeast use the oxygen or the fatty acids in the olive oil to help reproduce and build up their cell walls before attacking the sugar in the wort to ferment the beer.

Welcome to the forum and home brewing.

In regards to the citrus flavor, you will get better results adding American citrus type hops, like cascade or amarillo late in the boil. Your home brew store probably carries a citrus extract that you could use in the method you described, but in my experience the flavor of those extracts is often perfume like and artificial. You can also purchase a small amount of grains to steep for added malt flavor.

As mentioned above, reading howtobrew.com, especially the first two sections, and the posts and stickies on this forum, will help you a lot before your brew. Good luck.

Joe, not to get on a side tangent, but I literally just emailed New Belgium this week with a question regarding their experiment with full scale use of olive oil. One of the brewers there actually used it a part of his thesis and did a really detailed report on the use of olive oil in beer, but I don't believe head retention was an issue. They found it to be a great sub for O2 but couldn't justify the cost of working it into a perfectly complete brewing system. Would be happy to post a link on that if you'd like.

Pie Man is spot on. One of the best ways to add citrus to a beer is the hops. Down side is that you'd have to do the entire batch. There's even a strain by the name Citra. I've never added anything artificial to a beer because it's indeed easy to pick up on synthetic flavors in a beer.

I agree with others that if the citrus oil is indeed oil based, you don't want it near your beer. I like the idea of some citrus hops added toward the end (or right as you pull the wort off the heat). Amarillo (aka Amarillo Gold), Ahtanum, Cascade, Centenial, Simcoe, or Summit all sound good.

But if it were me, I'd go the Belgian wit way and add some orange zest and cracked coriander to the wort with 5 minutes left in the boil.

Just to throw this out there before you jump too far down the rabbit hole, the Mr. Beer American Light Lager is actually an ale fermentation (a dry ale yeast packet is included with the can of hopped extract). So I wouldn't worry too much about the need for lager type temp control at this point. I'd also say if this was a Christmas gift there is a good chance the dry yeast in the kit is still fine since so many Mr. Beer kits are sold over the holiday season it is unlikely you got a really old kit.

As far as tips on brewing this kit check out the 100+ page Mr. Beer sticky, it helped a lot with the two Mr. Beer kits I did last year before stepping into full boil extract and then AG.

And of course welcome to the hobby and good luck with your first brew!

miguy96b said:

Just to throw this out there before you jump too far down the rabbit hole, the Mr. Beer American Light Lager is actually an ale fermentation (a dry ale yeast packet is included with the can of hopped extract).

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Yeah, that's right. I wasn't looking at the kit when I typed the original message. Still, I'm under the impression that the taste of this kit is supposed to be more or less like a light lager. I'm not sure that I've ever had a light ale. Maybe it will be better than I thought.

Anyway, thanks for the advice everyone. I don't have to decide on adding anything at bottling for a little while right now. I'm reluctant to experiment in the fermenting process (e.g., by adding extra malts) because I'd really like at least some bottles to come out exactly as the mix calls for. This is my first batch after all--what if I accidentally make a bad mix decent, or a decent mix bad? I'd never know.

If I do try any sort of citrus extract at the bottling stage, I'll post an update. Meanwhile, I'll do the things I'm supposed to do like slack off at work and read How to Brew.