Wheat Beer Orange peel

[Paul Cannell]

Making a wheat beer today and I couldn't find any bitter orange peel for sale so I just got some oranges, peeled them and dried the peel in the oven.

I'm adding the peel in the last 5 mins of the boil. Should I strain them off before transferring liquid into the fermenter or leave them in there??

[Crusader-Rob]

I used Zest of orange in a brew once, the orange is the flavourful part and the white part is just plain bitter. if you zest and use it fresh it adds a different complexity to the beer.
I'd recommend using a hopbag when you put them in, I had massive amounts of trub in my fermenter because of that and the hops... although i madre a hoppy beer with them, so you might be ok with a wheat brew.

[Paul Cannell]

I chucked a stocking on the top of my fermenter and it seems to have done a good enough job of catching all the rubbish. Thanks.

[vdog]

I did a similar thing once when making a witbier, just used a veggie peeler to get strips of zest off the oranges (no pith) and threw them straight in. I can't see a good reason for drying the peel first, unless you were doing it miles ahead of time and needed it to keep until you made the beer - I reckon you could skip that step.