American Pale Wheat with Citrus Zest - Tasting Notes

This is my latest American Pale Wheat Beer.  These are beer utilizing American hops which produce a Citrus character - they typically use large amounts of late hops to impart a profound hop flavor.  To take this one step further, I decided to add Citrus zest (Orange and Grapefruit) to this beer.

To do this I mixed sugar and zest which extracts the flavor from the zest and then added this to the keg to kick off a second fermentation which carbonates the keg.  I used a fairly amount of fruit (2 oranges and 2 grapefruit) on this batch to be conservative - didn't want to create an over the top kind of flavor (read on to see the results).

Anyhow, the beer has been on tap for three weeks now.  The carbonation was a bit high initially with the priming but it's now pouring nicely.  I've been drinking it quite a bit and have been getting worried that the keg will kick soon so time to do an official tasking for the record. 

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Citrus and pine aroma are pretty strong - can't really say if I'm smelling hop of citrus fruit zest here.  Fairly rich smell.  May get a bit of sweet bready malt mixed in there as well.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a 1 finger head that slowly fades down to a thin ring.  Leaves some lacing on the glass.  The beer is golden and not quite clear.
• Flavor:
• The beer has some fruity flavors and piney hop flavors up front and the finish has a medium level bitterness.  There is some light malt flavor in the mix here as well.  The balance of the beer is pretty strongly slanted towards hop flavors and bitterness.  The bitterness lingers a bit longer than the hop flavor here.
• Mouthfeel:
• Light bodied and pretty dry.  Has a bit of a rough edge to the bitterness but still pretty nice drinking
• Overall:
• It's a pretty nice drinking beer with a nice hop focused flavor.  It isn't the most complex beer I've made and the hop character is fairly mild as far as these beers go.  Only going by my imperfect memory I'd say this beer isn't quite as hoppy as some of my other recent examples.  I also think a slightly higher staring gravity could be helpful as think it could have done with just a bit more balance to the malt.  Still, I'm happy to drink every drop of this keg.  As for the citrus, I'd say it certainly doesn't overwhelm the beer used at these levels - I think I'll try this approach again at some point using a bit more.