Very interested in your recipe as im making an extract blood orange Hefe very soon. Interesting to see you upped the amount of oranges you used.
Did you ferment in a bucket or damijohn? If Damijohn how did you get the oranges through the narrow neck?
thanks.
Here is the recipe I used....
- 6lbs dry wheat extract
- .25lbs aromatic malt (grain)
- .13 acid malt (grain)
- .13 malto Dextrine
- 1 oz hersberker hobs
- .25 oz perle hops
- 5 oz priming sugar (for bottling)
- Nottingham dry yeast
1. Take 3 gallons of water and steep grains at 155 degrees for 30 minutes. Add 2 gallons of water to another pot and add the meat of 4 blood oranges, along with the zested peel of 2 of the blood oranges (don't use any white parts of the orange, you want only the meat) (when zesting the peels ensure not to go too deep that you starting getting the white rind). ( I heated this up and made a tea out of it). **(later on I decided it wasn't enough of an orange flavor so I added more).
2. remove the grain bag from the steeping water and discard the grains.
3. Bring the 3 gallons to a boil.
4. Remove from heat and add the 6 lbs of wheat extract.
5. bring this mixture to a boil and add the hersberker hops.
6. Allow the wort to boil for 45 minutes then add the aroma hops and malto-dextrine.
7. boil for 15 more minutes.
8. combine the 2 gallons of the blood orange tea and the 3 gallons of wort into a 6.5 gallon fermenter. (I used a plastic food grade bucket).
9. cool down wort to 75 degrees or below.
10. When wort reaches 75 degrees or below pitch yeast (ensuring to follow the yeast directions).
11. Before adding yeast take OG hydrometer reading.
12. Add yeast.
13. put your lid back on with your airlock.
14. put in a cool dark place that will maintain a temperature below 75 degrees.
15. I kept this in my primary fermenter for a week. (since I used a kit the OG was supposed to come out to 1.054 but because I added blood oranges to the mix it came out around 1.062. With a target FG of 1.012......
16. I tasted the wort after a week in the primary fermenter and realized that the 4 blood oranges really had no effect at all on the 5 gallons of wort so I decided to add more blood orange. After reading on this forum people recommended using 1lb of fruit per gallon. So I went back to the store and bought 5lbs of blood oranges. After peeling and cutting and getting rid of any of the white parts of the orange I think I really only had 3.5-4 lbs of actual fruit.
17. I added the 5* pounds of blood orange meat along with about two more blood orange peel zested into my secondary 5 gallon glass carboy. I did this directly no freezing, cooking, or sanitizing of oranges any way. (I figured that by this point there would be enough alcohol to kill any nasties any way).
18. I racked the beer on top of the blood oranges and allowed it to sit for another week in the secondary fermenter.
18. After this point I bottled the beer and allowed it to sit in the bottles for at least two weeks. I opened one up around 7 days in the bottle and was worried because it didn't taste all that good, but after two weeks in the bottle it tasted amazing. Even with 5 pounds of blood oranges really it only has a hint of blood orange taste which is only really tasted as the aftertaste. Knowing this on my next batch I may even add more blood oranges so that I get 5 lbs of actual blood orange meat.