Brew Day: Orange Peel Pale Ale

This was a beer I planned to brew during a long time back, but the brew day unfortunately got pushed due to work.

Even though many, many wise people have stated that packaged fruit juice in India is just coloured, artificially flavoured plain water, there are times when I reach for a Tropicana or a Real fruit juice. I usually keep away from packaged juices and prefer the freshly squeezed one but depending on the time of the day and workload, sometimes that orange flavoured drink has an impact. Maybe it works differently for different people but this is how it works for me.

Some brewers prefer adding fruit juices or extracts to their beer. I prefer adding the actual fruit or sometimes, fresh fruit puree. In this case, it was going to be orange peel. I had quite a large amount of oranges sitting at home and I decided on a simple extract brew. Unlike an earlier beer where I added orange peels to the secondary and had to deal with a strong, overwhelming orange flavour in the beer, this time I decided to add a large amount of orange peel for a long boil, say around 30 minutes, rather than a standard 15 or 5 minute boil.

The only problem with this approach is that I feared the orange aroma would be lost during fermentation. It would decrease from the initial few days of fermentation and may vanish completely by the end of fermentation. I could be completely wrong here but there was only one way to get orange flavour in the beer and keep it there during fermentation: add a truckload of orange peels during the boil. Yes, a truckload, like around 200 grams of orange peel for an 8 litre batch.

I took a whiff of the fermenter last week and there was a strong aroma of malt and a very pronounced orange note to it. I took another whiff of the fermenter yesterday and the orange aroma is not quite as much as I expected. I was right in guessing that fermentation would drive away the orange aroma. I will have to taste this beer before confirming if I need to add even more orange peel to the boil.

Orange Peel Pale Ale

Specifics

Batch size (litres): 8 litres
Type: Extract

IBU: 20

SRM: 16

OG: 1.046

Grains and Sugars
1 kg Dry Malt Extract
 - 500 grams added at the start of boil
 - 500 grams at flame out

Hops
4 grams Horizon @ 45 min

Other Additions

Add 200 grams of orange peel at 30 minutes to the boil.

Yeast

Fermentis S-04 Ale Yeast

Schedules
Boiled for 45 minutes.