Tangerine Porter

[MrBandGuy]

With all your talk of pumpkin porters, it reminded me that I wanted to brew up a tangerine Porter inspired by a local breweries one off about three years ago. I have a solid Porter recipe, chocolate, roasty goodness, but I have a question about adding the tangerine peel.

I know the brewery used tangerine peel, orange peel, and coriander. When googling, the recipe from Radical brewing adds everything at flameout, in similar amounts as below. I was thinking of going dry hop style, which is what I do with my Christmas brew.

I'm thinking 1 oz of tangerine, .5 oz of orange peel, and 1 oz of coriander.

What do you all think? Flameout or dry hop? Too much peel? Coriander too high?

[BlackDuck]

I bet one of the reasons the brewery puts the peel in at flame out is that the hot wort will help extract some of the citrusy oils. If you know that you like theirs, why not try it the first time using their technique?


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[MrBandGuy]

I wondered about the oils. That makes sense, but wouldn't the yeasties take some of the flavor away? And for clarity, the flameout idea came from this AHA recipe, not the brewery. I'm not sure what they do.

[BigPapaG]

I think BD is on point...

Adding at flameout seems good...

Unless you have a way of killing off any wild yeast, bacteria and mold spores... Then adding as a dry hop would be safe enough... The alcohol would be present and there would still be some brewing yeast left...

But without that, I would lean toward flameout myself as the hot wort would not only extract the oils but sanitize the peels as well.

The crushed corriander could go in at T-10 as that seems to be ok when brewing witbeers...

My thoughts anyway, YMMV.

[Beer-lord]

I did a lemon saison and added the zest of 5 lemons at flameout and really think I should have used more but since you don't need nor want an abundance of tangerine, I think you should be fine.
I've read that it's best not to add zest in any longer than the last 5 minutes or you don't get what you want out of it.


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[MrBandGuy]

Right on! Thanks guys! Figured a few of you have done this kind of thing before.

[mashani]

Another option, which I have done, is to put the rind (or spice, or fruit, or vanilla beans or whatever) in a little bit of vodka in a jar. Do it when you brew your batch. Put a lid on it... shake it up every day. Then when primary fermentation settles down and you would "dry hop", instead pitch the strained liquid from the jar. Basically making your own pure extract. Don't need to worry about infection that way and it works great. Just kicks up your abv a little bit.

[MrBandGuy]

Good to know! i think I'll try the 10 min Coriander and peels at knockout. I'm sure it'll be delightful either way.

Side note, never used coriander before. Is 1 oz too much, or no?

[BigPapaG]

How much corriander?

It depends...

- Is it store-bought, brewer packaged from the LHBS or fresh dried from your garden? In order of favor and freshness, your garden will normally yield a fresher product overall, but the brewer packaged stuff tends to be somewhat consistent. Store-bought can be a gamble (sometimes)
Note: Many Asian markets carry a football-shaped variety that tends to be stronger, more aromatic and more flavorful... Use less of that...

- Do you like corriander?

- Do you plan to manually crack it, crush it with a rolling pin or grind it in a coffee grinder?
Ground will be stronger than crushed, while cracked (like cracked grains) will yield the least flavor and aroma.

For 5 gallons, I generally weigh out anywhere from 5-14 grams (up to a half ounce) of whole corriander, then manually crack it. I have seen recipes for witbiers that call for one ounce and have heard of folks going as high as an ounce and one half... Seems like too much to me, YMMV.

Note: I always err on the side of caution when adding spices of any kind to my brews. Take notes... If you want more next time... That's easy... Use more... If you want less this time... Sorry for your luck!

[mashani]

Only thing I will warn is that too much corriander can start to taste "soapy" for lack of a better word to describe it. So it's best to err on low side if your going to err. The threshold of this might vary from person to person. Just like some folks hate coriander leaves AKA Cilantro in even the tiniest amounts and other can chew up a whole bunch of it and think it's tasty.

[RickBeer]

I've made a Blue Moon clone with 1/2 oz, 3/4 oz, and 1 oz. Latest that I bottled Friday was 3/4. I think that may be good based on the taste, but I liked 1 oz also. This time I pulverized it in the coffee grinder.

[MrBandGuy]

Ok, cool. Thanks guys. I'll go with 1/2 oz. manually crushed. Much appreciated!

[Brewbirds]

FWIW Another thing you may consider, if you are the tinkering type, is making teas before you brew to see if you prefer light vs. heavy treatments of flavor additions in that recipe.

You may also want to explore essential oils (much like Mashani's homemade version) instead of rind on the citrus to avoid any unpleasant bitterness or volatilizing the flavor away at to high a wort temp. I'm pretty sure the citrus oils are kind of low so even at flame out the wort might be to hot.

[MrBandGuy]

This one is a week into fermentation and chugging along. For the record, I went with flameout and 1/2 oz coriander hand crushed. I'm going for a background note, so we'll see in a few weeks.

[JohnSant]

That sounds about what I did with my summer ale with orange. I came out with a hint of the orange and not overpowering. I would say just right.