Dried hibiscus & orange peel.. when to add?

[wgonfan]

I working up my 1st custom recipe & I'm going to add a small amount of bitter orange peel & some dried hibiscus flowers that I bought from AHS and was wondering what the right method would be? Do I add these late in the boil or "dry hop" them in a secondary?

I had originally planned to use a liquid hibiscus extract and add it in the bottling bucket but I was not able to find any.

 

[neosapien]

I'd boil up a tea with the orange peel and dry hop with the hibiscus, personally.

 

[avidhomebrewer]

I've never used hibiscus, but have used sweet/bitter orange peel many times. For the orange peel, I'd add that in the last 15 minutes of the boil, at the earliest. I would assume hibiscus would be added similarly.

 

[bobeer]

I've added orange peel in the middle of the boil before. I wanted the beer to have a bitter citrus flavor to it. It came out pretty well too. More of the pith bitter flavor came out rather than the aroma or citrus flavor.

I've never used hibiscus flowers but it sounds kind of cool. I would also dry hop with them to get the aroma. Let us know what you do and how it turns out!

 

[iambeer]

speaking as a person who has experimented with herbal teas, you can probably steep a strong hibiscus tea for an hour and just put that in there. hibiscus is very strong. and dark. but i wouldnt want that in my wort for too long ... (actually it's pretty risky to begin with unless you know exactly the taste you are going for) But that's just my take. you should try a hibiscus tea to see what that's like.. it's not what I expected, personally.