Hello. I am looking to brew this for summer enjoyment. Im aiming to approximate a clone to Blue Moon. My question is: should I go with fresh orange zest, or dried orange zest (either McCormick or Frontier), and what is the approximate equivalence between the two?
Thanks,
I think that several factors will play, imho:
-How fresh the dry orange peel is;
-Which type of fresh orange you use
-How you use the fresh orange peels, how small you chop it, when in the process you add it;
-Your taste buds;
My experience with fresh orange peels is, using long strings as peeled, it takes a considerable amount to impart flavor. I think that chopping it in small pieces or even crushing will improve efficiency but, doing this will release all that oily substance and I'm not sure how that could affect head retention. Also, I assumed fresh peels should never be boiled, may be I'm wrong, but a major difference on using fresh to dry peel is the great aroma, and you don't want all that to evaporate away. I used the peels during fermentation. Perhaps added to the keg, like dry hopping, would also work.
I noticed that beers using fresh peels would have stronger aroma when green, but both aroma and flavor changed a lot over time as the beer ages.
Dry peels, in other hand, impart stronger flavor in my opinion which doesn't change much with time.
Hope that helps, make your experiments and compare.