Lemon Zest ? ?

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beerbugger
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Lemon Zest ? ?

Post by beerbugger »

For my next batch I plan to use my favorite honey wheat ale recipe but to mix things up I would like to tone down the hops a bit and use lemon juice and/or zest to add some flavor and bitterness.
Should I add the zest to the mash or the boil?
Would the flavor be too prominent if i added a pinch to the primary? Or secondary??
What about juice?
Would it just throw the PH out of whack?
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wottaguy
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Lemon Zest ? ?

Post by wottaguy »

Hi!

I think what I would do would be to go with the zest and add it to the boil during the last 1 or 2 minutes before flameout. I have been thinking of using lemon zest for my next Wit as a summertime treat.

Please let us know how it comes out.

(_)3
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DTS78KC
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Lemon Zest

Post by DTS78KC »

I used 3 large lemons with a micro plane to get the lemon zest for my summer ale. Was wondering if this citrus makes the head on the beer fall alot quicker, because that is the case for mine.

5#belgian pils
5#white wheat malt
.25#cara pils
.25#tortiffied wheat

1oz haullertun traditional
3lg lemon zest
1T ground grains of paradise

1010 am.wheat

Anyone else have a problem with head retention on a beer from lemon/citrus zest ?
Give a man a beer and he'll waste an hour, teach him to brew and he'll waste a lifetime- Nuco Gordo
beerbugger
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Light Lime Lager - Probably old news by now....

Post by beerbugger »

I never did the lemon wheat ale I intended to for last summer...
But, for this summer I tried my hand at a light lime lager (seems to be all the rage with my yuppy freinds).
I cut back the hops by about 1/2 eliminating the aroma step all together to let the lime flavor dominate.
I added the zest and juice from one smallish lime for each gallon of wort at the end of the boil.
For me it was pretty ambitious but it turned out great.

Here's my 5 gal. recipe:
4lb Pilsner Malt.
4lb Canadian 2 row pale.
1lb flaked rice.
1oz NZ Halertau - 45min.
Irish Moss - 10 min
zest & juice from 5 limes - 2 min.
Single infusion 60 minutes @ 155 (68C).
Wyeast American Lager.
Lagered as per Wyeastlab website recomendations.
11C 1 week primary.
12C 3 weeks secondary.
Additional month cold conditioning at 8C.

Like DTS78KC I had issues with head retention at first. I also had a lot of haze and a weird fruity taste.
I dropped the conditioning temp to 6C for annother few weeks in the serving tank and all the problems seem to have resolved on their own.
I guess with light lagers like this one, time really is on your side.

If I did anything different next time I would bump up the bittering a bit - maybe add something clean and strong like Northern.

Otherwise it's a pretty !@#$ good summer beer. Very light bodied and refreshing. Just the right amount of lime flavor - fresh and tangy.
Very popular with the ladies (wink wink) and my Coors Light (poison) drinking buddies.
And (maybe from the rice) the gravity drop was massive for such a thin wort. It's by far the lightest and mildest beer I have ever made yet it calculated to just over 6.1% ABV!

Apart from a bit of haze (which continues to improve with time) this beer is very comparable to comercial beers like Miller Chill.

Now I definitely have to try the lemon wheat ale.
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