Bitter Orange Peel In Kit

[ColtsBay]

Hello Everyone,

I have recently decided to start home brewing, and while we are eventually going to do all grain, we are currently using kits to get our selves familiar,

My question is, I have a Brew house, wheat beer kit on now, but i would like to use bitter orange peel to add some orange flavor. I'm not sure when to add it though and how much would be appropriate, these kits usually produce about 23 liters when finished,

Thanks Alot

 

[Clann]

the summer ale I just made had the orange peel at 20 min.

 

[atchinator]

I've used those BrewHouse kits a lot. They sure make a reasonable beer. Plus, 23 liters - you gotta love metric.

You could probably go two ways with the orange peel.
1) Maybe the easiest thing to do and try first. Just throw the orange peel (and maybe some nutmeg? cinnamon?) into the secondary. You may want to soak the orange peel in a small amount of vodka for a week or so before hand - I've done that with other dried material but I've never done it with orange peel. Soaking in vodka (or whatever) will extract some of the flavours out and also sanitize the orange peel.

2) This would be a slightly advanced variation of the BrewHouse kit method, but make the beer according to the directions. After you add the extra water in to the fermenter, remove 5 or 6 liters and put it into a saucepan or pot and bring it to a rolling boil and add the orange peel. Make sure that when you remove those 5 or 6 liters that everything is sanitized. After about an hour, chill your sauce pan in a sink with ice or very cold water - try and bring it back to room temp. Add the wort in the sauce pan to the rest of the wort in the fermenter. Brew as usual. You could add somore more orange peel (as per idea #1) when you transfer to your secondary.

That said, idea #1 might be the best thing to try first.

Another thing to do is throw away the dry yeast package from the BH kit and use a liquid yeast appropriate for a wheat beer.

 

[BluWtrBrew]

I've made a couple of kit Belgians with bitter orange peel. The addition was always with the last hops (5 min) just long enough to sterilize. I always left it (and the Corriander) in the primary. They came out with good orange an spice.