Lemon zest in secondary

Hey guys,

I am making a Widmer Hefe clone for my wife, and she really likes lemon in it. I was thinking of maybe putting some lemon zest in secondary to get some of the flavor/scent. Has anyone done something like this before? How much should I put in and for how long? I've never put anything in secondary before except for hops. Thanks,

 

Have you made this recipe before? The reason that I ask is that it is going to be a little hard determining how much zest to put in. As long as the primary fermentation is done you should be fine to add the zest to the secondary. I've done this with both Lemon Grass and Chamomile to add a little lemon flavor.

If I were to do this I would finish off the fermentation as normal and then get either some lactic or citric acid from the local homebrew store and try adding those in small amounts (in individual beers) ((ala with a dropper)) to dial in the amount of tartness that she likes, then you can play with the various other lemony additions (lemon zest, chamomile, lemon grass) to round out the flavor and give it more depth

 

I was just listening to the Beer Radio episode on Witbier this morning. (check-it-out listening to beer radio on the commuter van :rockin: )

Doc uses like handfuls of fresh zest in the whirlpool at flameout to get all the zesty goodness in his witbier. I have put zest in the secondary, but... I steeped it in 8-10 oz of spring water for 15 minutes and dumped the liquid in so I wouldn't have to fish out the spent zest later. This worked reasonably well. If I made a mistake it was in only zesting two lemons for 5 gallons. Doc used like a softball size wad of zest for 20 gallons so... Use your best judgment on quantity.

 

Yeah, in radical brewing he talks about doing something similar; seeping in vodka and then using that to flavor the batch.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the responses. I think I might do a test and bottle half the batch, then put zest from a few lemons in secondary for a week with the other half and see what happens.