It’s that time of year again! Time to make some good holiday beer! I wanted to start this one sooner, but given I didn’t have any money until recently I couldn’t exactly buy my supplies.
For this years batch I did a few things different. First, I used the actual Saaz finishing hops, as opposed to the Hallertauer I used last year. Second, I didn’t add the honey and 1/2 of the liquid malt extract until 15 minutes left in the boil. Third, I used dried orange peel that I bought in the seasoning section of the store.
The problem with the orange peel from the store is I had no idea how much to add. I did some Googling, and found that 1 Tbsp is equivalent to one medium size orange. So, I went with that, adding 4 Tbsp of dried orange peels at the end where the recipe called for it.
This morning I took the initial gravity, 1.060, and pitched the yeast. Took an initial taste, and whamo! Bitter, just as I would expect, with tons of backend sweetness. Oooh, going to be a good holiday season!
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