ccpotter

Recipes 

Hi am just brewed an all grain - soon to be apple ale. Everything went well but I am adding a gallon of organic apple cider when racking to the secondary. Do I need to boil the gallon of cider before I put it in or do I just dump it in the secondary? Thanks in advance!

Brewkowski

Recipes 

Were you going to use it to sweeten up the brew at all or just to add some apple to the flavor profile? Unless the cider has preservatives it will start fermentation up again, so to me you could even throw it in when you go to pitch the yeast. I've never made that kind of beer before but it sounds interesting, what kind of malts and hops were you using? If the cider is natural, you could throw some potassium sorbate into it and let it sit for a couple of days so it will prevent the yeast from reproducing.

ccpotter

Recipes 

Here is my recipe
7 lbs. Domestic 2-Row barley malt, 1 lb. Honey malt, 1 oz. of hallertau hops and then 1lbs brown sugar put in during last 10 minutes of boil. I collected 5.5 gallons of wort from mash/sparge and boiled down to 4 gallons. I plan to put the gallon of apple in to make it a cider ale. Give it apple flavor. I think it will be quite sweet already. I do not mind if the apple cider causes my yeast to go nuts again as long as it does not hide all of the apple flavor.

gratus fermentatio

Recipes 

I wouldn't boil that apple juice/cider. Boiling it will only set the pectins & give you cloudy beer. It could also give that juice/cider a sort of "cooked" flavour. I'd either just rack onto it in secondary, or if you feel the need, hit that juice with campden 12 hrs before racking; the campden will eliminate anything that might be hiding in it.
Regards, GF.

ccpotter

Recipes 

Thanks for the info. I will not boil the cider and I will report back when this is done fermenting. The airlock smells amazing.