Brew Day May 18th, 2010 - Orange Peel Ale

I couldn't wait to brew this one so I bought some supplies locally. There is a homebrew shop that I found in Barrie that I thought I would try. They seemed to be the same type of place, however, their prices are almost double. They also charged for grain socks, which they only had small ones, so I needed to BUY two. They don't have real Irish Moss either, they have some sort of Irish Moss tablets? On the positive side, they have a greater yeast variety. For the first time, I will be using a different yeast, the one I am using for this brew is called Nottingham by Danstar. I doubt if I will use this place in the future unless I am in a pinch or I desire a different yeast.

Irish Moss Tablet?

For this recipe CLICK HERE.

The only thing that was changed was the substitution of Mauri Ale Yeast for the Nottingham.

I am getting better at this steeping thing as I was able to quickly heat the brewpot to 150F and maintain it very steadily for the full 30 minutes. The expensive undersized grain socks were disappointing, they were not long enough to tie off on the sides, so I fear they were sitting on the bottom for the entire steeping process. Also, I have learned to keep them loose, where these ones were packed pretty tight.

Small Grain Socks

For this recipe I will also use a late extract addition the same as I did for my Amber Ale. I decided to start with half of the total extract. After the hot break, the timer was set for 60 minutes and the first 28g of Cascade Hops were tossed in. This recipe uses nothing but Cascade, and the reason is because their citrusy flavor and aroma work well with the orange zest. This beer also uses the most amount of hops of any of my brews yet. That being said, this will not be a bitter beer. Only 1/4 of the hops are boiled for the full 60 minutes, the remaining are all added within the last 10 minutes, when adding hops late in the boil, it will hardly pull out much of the bitterness at all. The late addition hops are purely for flavor and aroma.

At 20 minutes left in the boil the second half of the extract was added and the timer was stopped until the boil resumed. While all of this was going on, I removed the zest from three large oranges to get the 2oz of orange zest required. I also placed 1oz of Coriander seed in a ziploc bag and beat it with a hammer.

Zesting the Oranges

Crushing the Coriander Seed

With 10 minutes left in the boil, I added 28g of cascade, 2oz of orange Zest, 1oz of Coriander, and the Irish Moss. Another 28g of Cascade at 5minutes, and 28g more at 1 minute left.

All of the 10 minute additions ready to go.

The orange smell really cam through strong when it was added to the boil, I cant wait to try this beer. The yeast was pitched as usual and the gravity reading was 1043 which is the number I seem to keep hitting. depending on how this one ferments with the Nottingham Yeast, I might have to look at bumping my extract up to 3 litres per batch to hit that 5% ABV.