Blood Orange Hefeweizen

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RedGuitar said:
It's possible that I missed this in the 50 pages of this thread, but here's my question:

I can't find blood oranges at this time of year. I read several posts where people substituted clementines or naval oranges, but these are a lot sweeter than blood oranges and lack that tartness. Any opinions on 1 red grapefruit with 4 naval oranges?
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Blood oranges that I have had aren't tart at all, in fact I would say they are sweeter than a typical orange in my experience. You get the tartness/bitter from the zesting (from either orange).

That said, you could certainly bring grapefruit to the party (I almost considered doing that as well). I would go with ruby red, but I would be a little hesitant to zest them. The zest on grapefruit is very very bitter. Go easy on the GF zest or just stick to using the orange zest. (IMO)

Oh yeah check out some pictures I put up of the BOH - posted them to the wrong link and Yooper tossed them over here - see post 519
 
Any opinions on doing this with only grapefruit, or some mix of GF and blood orange? I'd really like to get something that is more tart/sour tasting.
 
I don't know about the grapefruit. I would recommend doing it the blood orange way first because it is great. I made this a few months back and only have a few bottles left and let me tell you they are better and better. This was one awesome beer. I'm going to do it again but switch the yeast up for more of the banana/clove finish.
 
MDRex said:
Any opinions on doing this with only grapefruit, or some mix of GF and blood orange? I'd really like to get something that is more tart/sour tasting.
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For my palate I am not sure that sour is what I would want with this brew. Since this has the later hop addition and there is an aromatic spicy nuance I think the sour wouldn't be complimentary. For edworts bavarian hefe I think the slight sour could be in line with what you are looking for.

Honestly, I doubt using all grapefruit zest would make it sour, I think it would make it bitter. Not sure you can get this sour nuance you want by this addition.

Have you considered doing an acid rest? That would help with that. Not sure what your water PH is, but I know Kaiser says he likes to do an acid rest on the mash on his hefe's because he likes the pleasant sour note it gives at the finish, almost citrusy.
 
Thanks. I am def going to do this with the blood orange too. I've just been wanting to do some sort of strong grapefruit beer, haven't decided on the base yet tho.
 
MDRex said:
Thanks. I am def going to do this with the blood orange too. I've just been wanting to do some sort of strong grapefruit beer, haven't decided on the base yet tho.
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You could always adjust the hop schedule and only do one 60 minute addition for bittering and try with you grapefruit instead. Don't let us discourage you too much :)

as a test though, zest some GF and zest some orange and taste. I think you will see what I mean about bitter. You probably would want to dial down the GF zest to maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of what you would use with oranges. But that is shooting from the hip....
 
I second that. I do love me some grapefruit. What about splitting the batch? Half with some grapefruit and half with just the blood oranges.
 
I kegged an orange hefe last week and it tastes watery and lemony. I used AH hefe and then the meat and zest of 6 naval oranges. My gravities were spot on and I fermented between 66-68 degrees. I wish I didn't put the orange it now, I think it made it watery and lemony. Hopefully it gets better sitting for awhile.
 
I tried to brew this this afternoon. Followed the recipe to the tee, except for 2 substituions. I used Dried Wheat Extract instead of Liquid, as I've heard light beers are better off with dried extracts as liquid can sometimes make it too dark. I also replaced the out of season blood oranges with naval oranges.

Ran into a bit of a problem. My OG was 1.026. I was dumb-founded. I can't figure out what went wrong. The only thing I can think of is not stirring the wort after diluting it. I may have gotten a bad reading as the sample was mostly water. I'm hoping that is the case. That OG reading hit me like a ton of bricks. I had no idea what went wrong. Hopefully in 10 days it will correct itself otherwise I'm looking at a watery 2.9% ABV brew.
 
If you used all extract and you used the appropriate amount for the batch size you wanted and you topped off to the correct volume your error is most likely due to not stirring the wort before taking the sample.
 
CidahMastah said:
a few pictures of the my results towards the end of hte keg
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So I tried mine after being in the bottles for 2 weeks. It tastes good, but I am not tasting much clove or banana. I was hoping for more clove since I fermented at 62. Do you think the oranges masked the clove/banana?
 
MTB said:
So I tried mine after being in the bottles for 2 weeks. It tastes good, but I am not tasting much clove or banana. I was hoping for more clove since I fermented at 62. Do you think the oranges masked the clove/banana?
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I think the orange probably does mask it. So still on the fence for the ferment temp?
 
Sithdad said:
If you used all extract and you used the appropriate amount for the batch size you wanted and you topped off to the correct volume your error is most likely due to not stirring the wort before taking the sample.
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I used 5.5 lbs of Dried Extract, which was based off some calculations in BeerAlchemy. Boiled with the 4 gallons the recipe calls for. I ended up with 3.25 gallons of wort at the end of the boil. Added 1/2 gallon of water from the oranges. Then topped the wort off to 5 gallons with 1.25 gallons of water.

Seems perfectly fine to me. Based on those numbers BeerAlchemy was giving me a projected OG of 1.049. Not sure where 1.026 came from.

Here's to hoping it was just a stirring issue. :mug:
 
well i just finshed brewing up this guy for my 2nd batch... could not get any blood oranges but i pick up some really big navel oranges and used teh zest of all 4 of them.....

i ened up using 5.25lb of dme ..and when i was looking at the brew it seemed really dark.. not the orangy color that other people have shown there to come out as..... is there anythign special that needs to be done to keep teh color lighter and more orange?

oh quick question i dont have a bucket to use as a primary i only got a 6.5gallon glass carboy ..but my question is i put the fruit and zest in a a bag and then lit is sit in 160degree water for 20-25mins.. then i dunked my hands in some five star sanitser wash and then pick up the bags of fruit and had to push them threw the small hole of the carboy.. now will ther be a risk of infection from me having to finger the fruit and zest in the bag threw the carboy hole?
 
baddagger said:
well i just finshed brewing up this guy for my 2nd batch... could not get any blood oranges but i pick up some really big navel oranges and used teh zest of all 4 of them.....

i ened up using 5.25lb of dme ..and when i was looking at the brew it seemed really dark.. not the orangy color that other people have shown there to come out as..... is there anythign special that needs to be done to keep teh color lighter and more orange?

oh quick question i dont have a bucket to use as a primary i only got a 6.5gallon glass carboy ..but my question is i put the fruit and zest in a a bag and then lit is sit in 160degree water for 20-25mins.. then i dunked my hands in some five star sanitser wash and then pick up the bags of fruit and had to push them threw the small hole of the carboy.. now will ther be a risk of infection from me having to finger the fruit and zest in the bag threw the carboy hole?
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here's what i do. in fact i'll be brewing up a batch in a couple of weeks since i still have Blood oranges on the tree.

Boil about a quart of water. turn off the flame. add your zest, peels, juice, etc. to the water.Get a nylon stocking. soak it and your hands with starsan. add the zest mixture into the nylon stocking and tie it off.Then push the filled nylon into your fermenter, and add the water juice mixture. Your set.
 
2011-08-01191642-1.jpg


Brewed again last night but switched up the recipe a bit, I stumbled across a topic where Yooper had posted a German wheat recipe where the wheat outweighed the 2 row a bit and it looked fantastic, I believe the words were "you will believe you are in Munich".. I modified quite a bit and ended up doing the following:

5# Red Wheat
3# Weyermann Pils
Mash @ 153 for 90min
1oz Saaz @ 60
.5oz Tettnang @ 10
8 oranges, fruit and zest
3056 Bavarian Wheat Blend

We were going for a very light orange wheat, I was aiming for 1.042 OG and hit 1.046. Can't wait!!
 
MTB said:
Yup, I'm going to try 64 next time. Don't get me wrong tho...this brew is delicious. Just not what I was expecting
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Just a heads up - had similar results to yours, though I think the orange covers it up so this is something I want to try with ed worts hefe. I do get the banana at the finish better than I did at 68F, but cloves are hard to detect. In fairness the late aroma hope addition might be making the cloves less discernible.

I just brewed a dunkel about 7days + ago. I started it at 62-63F for the first 3 days, then brought it up to 68-70F to finish. will be interesting how this turns out.

Funny thing - I served this to friends from an ice cold growler last weekend, the banana REALLY came through nicely, nice sweetish aftertaste like I taste in commercial hefe (Franz, etc.). When beer is "cooler" ice cold it almost mutes hops. So I think the banana at least, might be a bit better than I thought, just the hop schedule mutes the banana.

Was using WL351
 
I brewed this batch again and used all DME an no LME. I transferred to secondary on top of twice the number of oranges the recipe called for. I did so because the oranges were barely detectable last time. I used the meat of the orange and the zest. Fermented at 66f and it has now been on the oranges in the secondary for a week.

My question is how long should I leave the beer on the oranges? I sampled last night and it's banana overload but no orange flavour. I do however notice a nice orange colour.
 
id say 1 week on fruit.

also, nice early bump for this thread this year. wasnt expecting to see this till about march/april
 
Very cool to see this one again! It was a favorite last year. On the list for when my rhubarb wheat runs out....
 
I've been waiting since last April for somewhere to get in some more blood oranges and guess what? I went to Bel-Air last night and they had a whole table of them. I grabbed about a dozen and I'll be making this brew this weekend. I'm pretty excited, I've been waiting a long time to be able to make this.

I'm thinking of also doing this with only DME with no LME. Has anyone who has done this gotten a lighter brew they can post a picture of?
 
blood orange beer.jpg


this is my all wheat DME one. i dont use liquid so i cannot compare, but i hope it still helps some.

the darker parts on the top are more of a reflection. the color on the bottom is more representative.
 
Looks like a fine brew to me. lol I picked up everything I need today, I'll be brewing this up this Saturday.
 
TheWeeb said:
Make it even more delicious!

I enhance the original extract recipe a bit. I did a partial mash with one pound of Weyermann Dark Wheat and one pound of Briess Carapills, and added a pound of brown sugar to the boil. I know it gave it a darker color (see the pic I posted a couple of pages ago), enhanced the flavor profile, and boosted the OG to 1.066. I had a FG of 1.012, making a nice, warming 7.2% ABV hefe. :ban:
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TheWeeb, I'm thinking of brewing partial as well and new to brewing. Would you mind providing partial recipe? Thanks so much in advance.
 
Just brewed up my batch today using all DME with 2/3 of the DME added in 20 minutes before the end of the boil. Came out to 1.048 OG. I threw the zest from all 4 blood oranges in. Depending on how it turns out after fermentation I may chop up and zest one more orange and throw it in and secondary the batch. It already smells great. I already can't wait to drink this one.

hefe.jpg
 
What do you guys think about adding organic Blood Orange fruit juice to the secondary? I brewed an experimental beer with Black rice (Forbidden Rice), Victory malt, American 6 row Pale, and some light Belgian candy to obtain a purple colored beer. I'm using Hefeweizen IV Ale yeast with idea of getting a spicy character. It's in the primary now and looks good. The purple color is very prominent, like a cloudy cabernet with a pink krausen. Then I see this thread and the idea of blood fruit in my Purple Reign sounds great. I have two quarts of blood orange juice. What do you guys think?

IMG_1067.jpg


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IMG_1061.jpg
 
Brewed this a couple years back and was a big hit. Just finished a batch this afternoon-looking forward to it again!
 
Rochefort10 said:
What do you guys think about adding organic Blood Orange fruit juice to the secondary? I brewed an experimental beer with Black rice (Forbidden Rice), Victory malt, American 6 row Pale, and some light Belgian candy to obtain a purple colored beer. I'm using Hefeweizen IV Ale yeast with idea of getting a spicy character. It's in the primary now and looks good. The purple color is very prominent, like a cloudy cabernet with a pink krausen. Then I see this thread and the idea of blood fruit in my Purple Reign sounds great. I have two quarts of blood orange juice. What do you guys think?
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THAT is an interesting brew! It kind of looks like blood! haha. I'll be very interested to see what this looks like in glass and more importantly how the flavor turns out.
 
Bottled last week and tried last night. Carbonated well and tastes great! Coloring lighter than expected and orange flavor not as strong as expected, however, great flavor! Will definitely brew again and will post a picture next time I pop one open (later today for sure)!
 
hbr2547 said:
Bottled last week and tried last night. Carbonated well and tastes great! Coloring lighter than expected and orange flavor not as strong as expected, however, great flavor! Will definitely brew again and will post a picture next time I pop one open (later today for sure)!
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Here is a pic - great brew!

image-3793624282.jpg
 
Looks like I'll be brewing this again on Sunday. Last time I did it with Valencias, extract and bottles. This time, blood oranges, all-grain and kegged. I'll post pics hopefully in about 3-4 weeks when I'm drinking it.
 
I'm picking up everything to brew today -- also my first all-grain (BIAB) so hopefully I won't screw it up :p
 
TheGeek said:
THAT is an interesting brew! It kind of looks like blood! haha. I'll be very interested to see what this looks like in glass and more importantly how the flavor turns out.
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It tasted terrible! I dumped the whole batch. I will experiment with the black rice again in the future. I'll try the blood orange Hefeweizen straight up soon.
 

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