Sweet orange peel to secondary?

[seven9st_surfer]

I made a Christmas beer 2 weeks ago and added 1 oz of sweet orange peel with 5 minutes left in the boil. I added it to my hop spider if that makes a difference. I just tasted it after 2 weeks in primary, and there is absolutely no orange taste at all. Is it a taste that might reveal itself with a bit of conditioning, or do I need to add some more to get that taste? If I do need to add more, do people recommend the dehydrated stuff from LHBSs (which I used initially), or fresh zest (sanitized, of course)? I'm going for a cinnamon/nutmeg/orange taste. I added the nutmeg in with the orange in the boil, and just racked onto 2 cinnamon sticks in secondary. Thanks for any help

 

[cherbhy]

I made a Christmas beer 2 weeks ago and added 1 oz of sweet orange peel with 5 minutes left in the boil. I added it to my hop spider if that makes a difference. I just tasted it after 2 weeks in primary, and there is absolutely no orange taste at all. Is it a taste that might reveal itself with a bit of conditioning, or do I need to add some more to get that taste? If I do need to add more, do people recommend the dehydrated stuff from LHBSs (which I used initially), or fresh zest (sanitized, of course)? I'm going for a cinnamon/nutmeg/orange taste. I added the nutmeg in with the orange in the boil, and just racked onto 2 cinnamon sticks in secondary. Thanks for any help

Try adding the spices and one quart of your finished beer with the priming sugar right before bottling. Boil for a minute as you normally would, then steep the spices, effectively making a tea. Cool, filter the spices out, add the primer to the bottling bucket, and away you go!

 

[Pastorken]

I've had the best orange flavor adding 1-2 ounces of fresh orange peel, soaked a few hours in vodka, to my secondary. After 7-10 days the orange really comes through.

 

[seven9st_surfer]

awesome, thanks for the advice guys.

 

[Pastorken]

Btw, part of the reason I like to use fresh orange is so I can really get JUST the outer layer and not all the white pith. The stuff my LHBS sells is just chopped, dried orange peel, overpriced and not high quality at all, IMO.

 

[beernutz]

I've added orange peel soaked in vodka and also used the same amount of orange peel which had been heated to 200 degrees in an oven for about 20 minutes and to me I got much more orange aroma from the latter method.

Both will give you good aroma but the oven heated version, which I just placed into a sanitized boiling bag and added straight to my corney keg for a secondary/aging vessel, produced a much more pronounced orange aroma.

 

[Pastorken]

Hmmm, I've never tried heating it in the oven. Thanks for the idea, beernutz! I love orange in my beers and I'll have to give that a try.