Wheat beer with variations

[mikebrown123]

OK, so I have been looking to do an all grain wheat beer for the wife. I want to try several different flavorings in the secondary and make a 12 pack of each or so. My plans are to brew the 5 gallon batch and ferment for primary on my 6 gallon glass carboy. After 2 weeks or so, I will rack as follows and add extract flavors:

1 Gallon Fermentor - Blueberry Extract (1/2 oz)
1 Gallon Fermentor - Raspberry Extract (1/2 oz)
1 Gallon Fermentor - Mango Extract (1/2 oz)
5 Gallon Carboy (remaining 2 gallons) - Would like to do a Blue Moon clone. I have Bitter orange peel and coriander. Since I cannot add to the boil, any thoughts on how to get this flavor into the 2 gallons? Should I add the spices to vodka for a period of time, boil spices in water or just put in secondary?

Looking for thoughts as well as recommendations on space quantity. These variations will be bottled with carbonation tabs as my kegs have other plans.

Thank you!

 

[Gareth68]

First, if you are going for blue moon it should be sweet orange peel not bitter.

Do you have any DME?

You could do a mini boil and add that.

Otherwise I kinda like the vodka idea.

Regardless I'll be checking this thread as I'm curious what others will recommend.

 

[joshesmusica]

do you ever dry hop beers? if so when do you do it?
there are a lot of people who have stopped using secondaries. big discussion, but it's basically because the benefits are not clearly proven to outweigh the risks, those being contamination and/or oxidation.
same types of problems can technically come from dry hopping, even in the primary. so what some people do to avoid that is dry hopping when there's still 5-10% of fermentation left.
anyways, my theory would be that you can always avoid contaminates by being anal retentive with washing and sanitizing everything. a few minutes of exposure to air won't really be enough time for the nasties to get in there. but you could rack to your secondaries with a little fermentation left in order to still have CO2 production. i would think with your idea you would want to either do this or inject your secondary with co2 before racking.
the vodka idea or the mini-brew idea i think are both good ideas. sweet or bitter peels work, but like he said, if it's actually blue moon you're looking for, i agree that you're probably gonna want sweet. if it's hoegaarden you're wanting, bitter works fine.
sounds like a fun project!

 

[mikebrown123]

Thank you! I will be getting a flask for yeast starter, so I could do the mini-boil with DME in that and add the orange and coriander. Not too concerned if it is more Ho than BM.

 

[joshesmusica]

i'm not expert so hopefully some others more knowledgeable about yeast in wort/beer can chime in.
but if you think about going the route of waiting until about 90% of fermentation is done, i wouldn't think you would need a yeast starter. there should be enough healthy yeast in there to eat up any sugars you add, as what you are adding shouldn't be too much more than if you were adding priming sugar.