Soaking fruit peels in vodka

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HopIt

Soaking fruit peels in vodka

Post by HopIt » Sun Mar 27, 2016 1:37 am

Following drinking beavertown's bloody 'ell (an IPA with oranges) I decided that I'd like to get some citrus fruit flavour into my next IPA. I'm doing a west coast style IPA and am soaking the zest of a grapefruit and an orange in cheap vodka in a glass, with a bit more than enough to cover the zest.

I am going to do this: http://ryanbrews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10 ... foods.html which I am hoping will help avoid spoiling the head retention by removing most of the oil from the steeped solution.

Do I need to sanitise the glasses I store the vodka in when I wash the oil from the steeped vodka, or will the vodka sanitise everything itself? This might sound pretty dumb but I was wondering if the alcohol will have partially evaporated away over the last week so it is too low an ABV (the glass was covered with cling film) or that the cheap vodka wasn't strong enough in the first place, and I also read that vodka is not so great at killing mould spores which might have been on the zest itself. Can i basically use clean glasses (not sanitised) when removing the oil and then just dump the solution in when bottling or should I be worried about my process?

Any advice happily appreciated!

rpt
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Re: Soaking fruit peels in vodka

Post by rpt » Sun Mar 27, 2016 12:25 pm

70% alcohol is used for sanitising so I'm not sure if vodka at 40% or less is effective.

Rad

Re: Soaking fruit peels in vodka

Post by Rad » Wed Mar 30, 2016 9:42 am

Nothing harmful to the beer can survive in 40% alcohol, it's just a matter of time. The reason 70% is used is that it offers best balance of killing power and evaporation rate.

rpt
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Joined: Thu May 01, 2014 4:35 pm
Location: Ilkley, West Yorkshire

Re: Soaking fruit peels in vodka

Post by rpt » Thu Mar 31, 2016 5:14 pm

I think 70% is used because it is the best concentration for killing stuff - it is actually better than higher concentrations. But I can see that leaving something soaking in 40% alcohol would be effective.

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