kchomebrew
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I recently brewed up a 5 gal. batch of session white IPA (cultured a hybrid american/belgian yeast) and became interested in the concept of ICUs and using citrus in the secondary. Nearest I can tell, ICUs are being used at knockout/whirlpool on the hot side. However, most of my experiences in brewing/fermenting with fruit have yielded best results when fruit was used during fermentation/secondary fermentation. Why not add citrus during fermentation ? As such, I opted to go ahead and try this out on the white IPA batch I brewed. After dumping trub, I went ahead and made the citrus additions to the fermenter. I juiced enough Paramount oranges to yield approx. 8oz. of fresh orange juice. Then, I zested 8 oranges which gave me about 1.5 tbsp of orange zest. All of this was added to the fermenter along with a dry hop addition of citra hops. I'll be adding another round of citra dry hops in a couple days before cold crashing and kegging.
So why did I use 8 oz. of orange juice for a 5 gal. batch ? After reading the Embrace the Funk article where Shaun Hill is interviewed about ICUs (here), I came up with some ideas. It seemed clear, from the article, that citrus was being used post boil with the ICU calculations. I'm not sure the idea of ICU means anything since there seems to be no data on the citrus oil/acid content of various oranges. Either way, the concept works for some sort of scale/use of citrus in brewing. The article mentioned using 1gram p/liter of citrus zest (that's approx. 1.6 tsp of zest for a 5 gal. batch) and a ratio of 1.5L of fresh squeezed juice to 500L of wort (1/4 cup of fresh squeezed juice per 5 gal. batch). I know from using spices, fruits, and herbs in secondary fermentation that you need to use a bit more than would be added during boil/post boil. Infact, my experience has been to use about 3X to 4X more that you would during a boil. As such, I calculated out using 8oz/1cup of juice and 1.5 tbsp of zest. Keep in mind, I have no clue if this will work well. It's just an educated guess and I'm sharing my thought process.
The Embrace the Funk article goes on to mention that the juice and zest will only impact the pH by a reduction of 0.1, which isn't much. I'm going to assume that pH reduction will be a bit more on my batch since I'm adding more volume of acids and citrus oils. And that's okay. I think having a tartness to this beer will work if it does drop the pH a bit.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I can say this beer has a certain amount of ICUs because I'm not sure of the impact the scale provides on citrus additions on fermentation side of things. With that in mind, I'll post some of the finished results. Should be done with the dry hopping by this weekend and will keg at some point next week. Should have some sample/tasting notes up by some point within the first week of Dec.
So why did I use 8 oz. of orange juice for a 5 gal. batch ? After reading the Embrace the Funk article where Shaun Hill is interviewed about ICUs (here), I came up with some ideas. It seemed clear, from the article, that citrus was being used post boil with the ICU calculations. I'm not sure the idea of ICU means anything since there seems to be no data on the citrus oil/acid content of various oranges. Either way, the concept works for some sort of scale/use of citrus in brewing. The article mentioned using 1gram p/liter of citrus zest (that's approx. 1.6 tsp of zest for a 5 gal. batch) and a ratio of 1.5L of fresh squeezed juice to 500L of wort (1/4 cup of fresh squeezed juice per 5 gal. batch). I know from using spices, fruits, and herbs in secondary fermentation that you need to use a bit more than would be added during boil/post boil. Infact, my experience has been to use about 3X to 4X more that you would during a boil. As such, I calculated out using 8oz/1cup of juice and 1.5 tbsp of zest. Keep in mind, I have no clue if this will work well. It's just an educated guess and I'm sharing my thought process.
The Embrace the Funk article goes on to mention that the juice and zest will only impact the pH by a reduction of 0.1, which isn't much. I'm going to assume that pH reduction will be a bit more on my batch since I'm adding more volume of acids and citrus oils. And that's okay. I think having a tartness to this beer will work if it does drop the pH a bit.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I can say this beer has a certain amount of ICUs because I'm not sure of the impact the scale provides on citrus additions on fermentation side of things. With that in mind, I'll post some of the finished results. Should be done with the dry hopping by this weekend and will keg at some point next week. Should have some sample/tasting notes up by some point within the first week of Dec.
