Personally, I'm not a huge fan of grapefruit beers, but I'm in the process of brewing a bunch of kegs of beer for my brother's wedding in July and his fiance has now requested that we do something with grapefruit. I have 10 gallons of a Rye IPA fermenting for the wedding in two 5 gallon fermenters. I would like to dry hop one of the 5 gallon batches with citrusy hops (i was thinking mandarina bavaria and citra) and just add the grapefruit flavor to the other 5 gallon batch without dry-hopping and compare the citrus-like qualities. Can anyone who has used grapefruit post-boil before weigh in and tell me the best methods for getting good, clean grapefruit flavor into this beer? Thanks in advance
@stealth made a tasty grapefruit IPA that simply had juice added to the keg. Perhaps he would shed some light on how much and sweetened vs. unsweetened juice
Amarillo dry hop definitely gives a grapefruit aroma and taste for me. Just did that to a beer. I also collected the juice from 2 large bitter grapefruit and threw in the juice into a 3 gallon batch.
I made a grapefruit IPA last year and "dry hopped" the zest of 6 grapefruits in 5 gals for 2 days before bottling. Great aroma and flavor. Hops were mainly Citra and Chinook. I'm going to do the exact same thing again-very happy with the result.
