Grapefruit in Wit

I recently did a wit beer with orange zest and cooriander, along with some tea and pepper in it (per beirmunchers recipe). It turned out great, but it got me wondering, what if I added grapefruit zest, along with the orange zest, and made the same recipe, minus the cooriander? I know that cascade hops have a natural grapefruit flavor, so why not supercharge that flavor with the zest? Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated. For now I will sit here and enjoy my Youngs Double Chocoalte Stout, dreaming of citrus goodness! :rockin:

do it up! a lot of people use many different types of citrus zest in their wits.

In Radical Brewing, Randy Mosher recommends using equal parts sweet orange peel and grapefruit peel to simulate Seville (sour) orange peel, which is hard to find.

A lot of the citrus flavor in a Wit comes from the coriander. If it doesn't you are using the wrong type of coriander... Indian coriander tastes strongly like grapefruit.

Yeah my current wit tastes pretty citursy, and I think that was due to the coriander. However, the coriander has a very distinctive taste. I am wanting what dubbeldach was talking about, almost a sour wit.

Deuce said:

Yeah my current wit tastes pretty citursy, and I think that was due to the coriander. However, the coriander has a very distinctive taste. I am wanting what dubbeldach was talking about, almost a sour wit.

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I wasn't necessarily talking about a sour wit, just using sour peels. Using sour/bitter peel supposedly has more orange ooomf than sweet oranges. The resulting flavor is more pleasing, not more sour.

I'd be interested in hearing how it turns out. If it's any good, send the recipe to the Philadelphia Brewing Company, and ask them to substitute it for their Walt Wit, which also uses grapefruit zest, and which is terrible. Just. . . just TERRIBLE.

I haven't had a good beer yet from PBC. Horrendous... Their 4 flagships taste like bad homebrew.

I just started drinking a wit with the peel of 2 grapefruit, 1oz corriander, and hopped to 15 IBU with centennial and another 0.25 oz centennial at flame out and Wyeast Forbidden Fruit yeast (3463). There is a touch of odd grapefruit bitterness at the end, but the taste doesn't linger for too long. It hints at being grapefruit without it being in your face. I might decrease the amount of zest and see if the odd bitterness goes down next time.

I know you weren't asking for this but I really recommend the corriander and other spices from Penzy's.

noisy123 said:

I know you weren't asking for this but I really recommend the corriander and other spices from Penzy's.

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I just brewed a Wit on Saturday using Penzys coriander and it smelled amazing. I also did the equal parts grapefruit to orange...and threw in some lemon zest for bonus cirtusy sunshine flavors. It's already slowing down on the ferment...I might be drinking this one next week!