What should I add to my pale ale

Ive got a cascade and citra pale ale going. Its a week into ferm with us05. I have a couple growlers and a 2 gallon bucket. The brew is about 4.2% srm about 8

Idk how this wound up on this thread somebody can move this

Why do you need to add anything?

Eric

I dont need to. But I dont make many batches and I like variety and to try new things is all

Rack into 1-gallon jugs and dry hop with 5 different hops. It can give 5 very different beers.

B

birvine said:

Rack into 1-gallon jugs and dry hop with 5 different hops. It can give 5 very different beers.

B

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Ferment in the jugs? Deetz on how to do this?

rack ontop of oranges or grapfruits

When your beer is fully fermented and has been sitting in your fermenter for 3 weeks, rack it into 5 different gallon jugs and add different things. Use your imagination, lime and grapefruit, crystal hops and orange peel, what ever you feel like!!! Let it set for a week or two and bottle it and then enjoy how unique each beer will be from the same batch.....IMHO

I am thinking about the oranges thing. Maybe clementines. I really like these hops and did alot of late addition so I don't think dry hopping unless I use citra or cascade. Thanks for the responses. I'm only about a week and a half in. I'll post some pics later of what Ive got

BamaRooster said:

When your beer is fully fermented and has been sitting in your fermenter for 3 weeks, rack it into 5 different gallon jugs and add different things. Use your imagination, lime and grapefruit, crystal hops and orange peel, what ever you feel like!!! Let it set for a week or two and bottle it and then enjoy how unique each beer will be from the same batch.....IMHO

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Like milk jugs? How will it be ok with just screw on tops?

i think he meant 1 gallon growlers... i like the 5 different thing... OH... when you rack on top of fruit... do I peel and then get rid of the white stuff...

For zest, I've found that infusing it in vodka first works well. Zest the citrus fruit leaving the white portion behind. Add the zest to a mason jar with about 1/2 cup of vodka. Infuse for several days. Strain and add to 5gal batch. Use less if you're doing a smaller batch. If you want to try it before you add it to the entire batch, you can add a small amount to your hydro sample to get a rough idea. I've done this with lemons, limes and clementines.

cool, what exactly does the vodka do...

You're just using the vodka as the medium to infuse the zest, as opposed to using the "dry hop" method.

Ur saying add the zest after straining, or adding the vodka and leaving the zest behind?

The vodka gets added. The zest get's thrown away. After a several days in the vodka the flavor of the zest gets infused in the vodka. The volume of vodka is small compared to the volume of beer so you don't taste the vodka.

Bottle 4 gallons of perfectly good beer and play with one. Minimize potential loss.

For fruit like oranges I just zest all of them cut them all in half and rack beer on top

I don't think hoppy beers take well to unusual additions like fruit. I'm all for splitting it up and dry hopping with different hops, though!

I had mad an all columbus pale bittered to 40ibus earlier this year, dumped 4 lbs of cherries in there. That was real nice. But for citra cascade I am thinking more the orange zest or dry hop route

Depending on what your using for aroma hops, lime can be very nice in a pale ale. I made a PA with crystal hops for aroma and added lime zest. The result was very nice.

personally, i'd just dry hop the cr@p out of it with Citra. i have a citra/cascade pale in a keg right now and it's grrrreat, but the citra's seem like they could've benefitted from a dry hops addition of more citra. also, orange/tangerine/clementine zest may be nice with those hops. i also thing some mango or papaya flavor might go nice with citra hops.

That sounds nice. A nice citrusy burst for late feb early march. Just in time for march madness

Well bumpng this because I left this beer as it was for the most part. I did rack 3/4 of a gallon onto black cherry juice. I had made some black cherry cider and had alot of juice left and figured why not. The rest is bottled, just waiting to condition

Good luck with your bottle conditioning. I came in to say to try some oak chips, but too late, and you sound like you are heading for a tasty batch. I'm currently brewing an IPA with an oak addition for 7 days before bottling.

Oak chips do sound nice maybe ill take a little outof my black cherry and do a few bottles like that. I love variety

I have a pale fermenting right now, I added 1 Tbsp of fresh grated ginger per gallon to. Also added the peel of one grapefruit per gallon. I peeled each grapefruit then scraped away the white stuff from and then roasted them at 250 degrees for half hour. Got that idea from another recipe somewhere, no idea what it does vs just adding the peels non roasted but I was digging the creative twist so I tried it! Can't wait til this batch is ready to taste!

Very nice. Thats whati love about homebrew, gets my creative juices flowing. I find myself dreaming about recipes all the time

Shameless bump. But for anyone that was interested. The beer turned out nicely. Kinda like a mild apa. An american mild @ 4.1%. Got a gallon mixed with black cherry juice that I havent bottled yet. Heres the one im drinking all night tonight

I love Citras. I make my APA with Citra as the only flavor/aroma hop. Was thinking of making an IPA with the Citra/Cascade combo though...