Brewtips - Specialty Ingredients

Spice Experiment

Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 10:16:50 -0800
From: Bart Thielges
Subject: Coriander and orange peel boil experiment results

Last night, I completed an experiment to determine the proper boil times for coriander and bitter orange peels, two ingredients thought to be in Celis Grand Cru. Here are the results.

Executive summary - Boil the heck out of the orange peels, don't boil the coriander.

Description of experiment :

Two saucepans containing about 12 ounces of water each were brought to a boil.
About two tablespoons of sugar were added to each to make the tasting solution closer to a completed beer.
In one pan, a teaspoon of ground coriander is added. In the other, a piece of orange peel, perhaps 1/10 ounce was added. The orange peel was labelled "Belgian bitter orange peel, curacao type" from Fermentation Frenzy in Los Altos, CA, USA.
During the boil, 1 ounce samples were drawn at various intervals and set aside to cool. Therein lies the primary flaw in this experiment - the solution volume significantly lowered during the process due to the sampling and evaporation. I attempted to counteract this in the last 30 minutes by adding a little more water (4 ounces or so). Still, I think that the results are useful.
The samples were drawn at 1, 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes after the boil began. All samples were allowed to cool to room temperature and then tasted.

Here's my perceptions :

boiltime    coriander                       orange peels
-------- ------------------------------  --------------------------------------
1        quite tasty - distinct flavor   almost no orange flavor.  little color
5        flavor significantly faded      similar to the flavor of the 1
                                         minute sample, perhaps a bit more
15       even less flavor                orange flavor begins to come through
                                         in earnest
30       little flavor                   more orange flavor, a bit of a sharp
                                         edge
60       tasteless sugar water           strong orange flavor with a bitter
                                         tinge.  Definite orange color.

So my recommendations would be to use orange peels for a full hour boil and add coriander at the very end. I hope this info helps ! As a reminder, if you would like to join in the Celis Grand Cru recipe project, please reply to me and I'll add you to the mailing list.

Brewing equipment destroyed in this experiment - 0 (but lots of dishes to clean)

Brewtips - Specialty Ingredients

Spice Experiment

Organization

Interact

Resources