Lemon Rind in Secondary

I want to add some lemon rind in with my dry hops in a brew I made last weekend. Is it ok to just add it without sanitizing it? Same goes for dry hopping right? I can just throw the hop leaf into the secondary fermenter before I rack into it right?

Thanks for any advice..

2drunkmonks

Hops are naturally antimicrobial, so infections with dry hopping are exceedingly rare. I'm not sure about lemon rinds though. What I do is use starsan on the outside of the lemon and the grater, then shave off the rind. You can also soak the rind in a small amount of vodka and then dump the whole thing in.

GaryJohn said:

Hops are naturally antimicrobial, so infections with dry hopping are exceedingly rare. I'm not sure about lemon rinds though. What I do is use starsan on the outside of the lemon and the grater, then shave off the rind. You can also soak the rind in a small amount of vodka and then dump the whole thing in.

Click to expand...

+1 to this^^

Great thanks,

Have you tried both methods? Do you prefer one over the other? I think I will try sanitizing the micro-plane and the lemon and toss that in with the hops. How much do you add? I want it to subtle. The northern brewer hops that I am dry hopping with have a lemon like flavor also.

2drunkmonks said:

Great thanks,

Have you tried both methods? Do you prefer one over the other? I think I will try sanitizing the micro-plane and the lemon and toss that in with the hops. How much do you add? I want it to subtle. The northern brewer hops that I am dry hopping with have a lemon like flavor also.

Click to expand...

I've done it once. I used the zest from 2 "medium" sized lemons, with the starsan sanitation technique. My OG was 1.051, and I dry hopped for 5 days.

The lemon flavor was very subtle. If I didn't know it had lemon zest in it, I probably wouldn't be able to pick out the flavor, though I think it added something.