I recently brewed an orange american pale ale. I toned down the IBUs, boiled about 8 orange peals during the last 10 minutes of the boil, after 4 days of ferm, I added 2 cups of orange juice. I tasted once fermentation was complete and it tasted good. Nice orange flavor with slight hoppiness. I let chill for 3 weeks, put on co2 and tasted again… all the hoppiness is gone and there is no orange flavor.
Any Ideas?
Put some orange zest in a hop sack and toss it in the keg
How about some more hops too?
Of course you could. I would do one thing at a time and taste it until you get what you want
But watch to much orange peel. Or to much hops it might not balance the flav of beer you try to get. Do it slowly.
Thanks yall. Ill give it a shot.
Am i doing something wronh that my beer lost its flavor?
Hard to say. Ive never added juice and for an ipa I’ve only added zest as a (dry hop) I think adding it to the boil it just ferments out.
Adding any sugar without heat pasteurization or chemical additives will result in fermentation, thus loss of “that” flavor. “That” flavor provided by fruits often relies on their sugar. Once that sugar is fermented it provides a different flavor, or loss of that flavor.
Biggest cause of lost hop flavor is oxygen exposure. Also, as your beer drops more and more clear, the yeast falling out of suspension can strip out some of the flavors. But the bigger factor is probably oxygen.
You just can’t make a bad batch taste good after the fact.
I tried that with a recent porter recipe “experiment”.
I brewed a bad porter (faulting the random recipe that I came up with) and after trying a lot of add ons, I tossed it.
Then I brewed a new porter (recipe from a AHA award winner) and it is is pretty good (I think best porter yet for me).
I would not stray away too far from proven recipes, good yeast and fresh hops else it may disappoint you.
And of course, clean and sanitize everything past the boil.
Who wants to throw out beer?
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Nelson Massey pure orange extract at bottling. A tiny capful to begin with. It’s strong so go slow. I just tonight drank a 6 month old pale ale I used it in and it’s still strong.
I also recommend getting a microplane for all things zesting and grating.
