Apfel Bier?

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racer944

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I have been reading around here for a few days, and have really been impressed with the amount of knowledge here. I have just finished my first apfelwein (gets done with bottle conditioning tonight!), and am ready to take it a few steps further. Now, I'm looking to aim more for an apple beer, if you will, and was wondering if anyone had pursued using malt extract in conjunction with beer yeasts. If I don't get any answers, I'll post up my findings, but I'm about to put in an order for the syrup and yeasts.

I have been amazed by people's resources here with specific apple juices, and unpasteurized juices, but for me it's costco's apple juice gallon jugs.

Thanks!
 
This past Saturday I made 5 gallons of Apfelwine from Ed, however I did a twist in a direction you are going. Instead of the corn sugar, I used 3.3# DME and Danstar Munich yeast. I think that one was good for wheat beers, not that I used any wheat DME, it had no wheat in it. The fermentation is a very vigorous ferm. I will be putting an airlock on tonight as I was forced to use a blow off tube, I cam home at lunch on Monday and found yeast and foam all over. It looks like a raw apple juice in color, and the smell was god awful, SWMBO made me move it to the garage. HA.

6

Oh yea, I used 100% tree top apple juice
 
personally i havent tried it but you might turn out something remeniscent of a bragot (mead w/malt and hops.) If your gonna try it i would scale down to a few 1 gal batches and try different combinations. Your also going to need some hops for it to be considered beer. Edworts apfelwein uses montrachet wine yeast which ends at a low gravity whereas with beer yeast your looking at a much higher gravit(ie: 1.013 vs .997). You could try notingham as as a neutral yeast...
 
This is a great question, I was also thinking of doing the same thing. I have 4 gallons of apple juice ready to go, but I need to pick up some corn sugar and yeast. I was thinking of doing 3# Light DME, and Nottingham yeast. Anyone else ever try this, and what was the taste like?
 
Yeah, I've got Safale wb-06, and will be buying a couple 3.3# cans of Munton's wheat. 6, did you straight dump the DME in or put it in boiled water? I'll eventually go to hopping it, but I wanted to stay relatively safe at this point of the game.

I'm still pretty new to this, and this is my first time branching out. As usual, I need to re-evaluate the first rule of brewing, but I can't help but get a bit freaked out.

Two Heads, check out the sticky on the Cider subforum. It's a 3 page read of yeast and sugar experiments. Gets to the bottom of a few questions, and he's a HUGE fan of Nottingham.
 
If you're looking for apple beer, I'd stay away from the traditional apfelwein style recipes. Look more to ciders, the apples used for ciders have a lot more punch than the ones used for apfelwein. If you're looking for an apple flavored beer you'll need to do more than just dump in apple juice, commercial apple juice is incredibly sweet and not very apple-y.

I'd look into some cider recipes and work from there for your apple flavoring. The bottled extract flavorings work reasonably well, but I wouldn't rely on them for all of your flavor.. too much and they can taste fake.

I've done apfelwein with beer yeast, good stuff, especially if you pick a yeast with a bit of character or low attenuation.
 
racer944 said:
Yeah, I've got Safale wb-06, and will be buying a couple 3.3# cans of Munton's wheat. 6, did you straight dump the DME in or put it in boiled water? I'll eventually go to hopping it, but I wanted to stay relatively safe at this point of the game.

I'm still pretty new to this, and this is my first time branching out. As usual, I need to re-evaluate the first rule of brewing, but I can't help but get a bit freaked out.

Two Heads, check out the sticky on the Cider subforum. It's a 3 page read of yeast and sugar experiments. Gets to the bottom of a few questions, and he's a HUGE fan of Nottingham.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice on that sticky, some VERY good info. I think I'm going to test out my own recipe:

4 gallons Tree Top 100% Apple Juice
2# Light DME
1 packet Nottingham dry yeart
Ferment @ 62-65F
Crash cool when gravity measures 1.006 (I'm after some residual sweetness).

What say ye?
 
TwoHeadsBrewing said:
Thanks for the advice on that sticky, some VERY good info. I think I'm going to test out my own recipe:

4 gallons Tree Top 100% Apple Juice
2# Light DME
1 packet Nottingham dry yeart
Ferment @ 62-65F
Crash cool when gravity measures 1.006 (I'm after some residual sweetness).

What say ye?
Click to expand...

i doubt the nottingham is going to attenuate down to 1.006. maybe 1.010 or so at most. Keep in mind this is a beer yeast
 
I'll ask the elusive question yet again.....

How does Unibroue add apple to Ephemere? I have never seen this answered...
 
scinerd3000 said:
i doubt the nottingham is going to attenuate down to 1.006. maybe 1.010 or so at most. Keep in mind this is a beer yeast
Click to expand...

I hope it will attenuate, but looking at the sticky it seems he's been able to get it down there and farther just fine. In fact, I've used Notty in a couple of my beers and they attenuated down to 1.008 in about a week. I would think apple juice and a bit of DME would almost completely ferment out if left long enough.

Nottingham – This has been my favorite yeast for several years. It works well for sweet ciders and cysers with pasteurized juice, although not so well for unpasteurized cyser. It cold crashes well with any juice. With just juice, no sugar, and cold crash around 1.004, it is outstanding. If you use sugar and bump sg up to at least 1.060, then you can stop fermentation with pasteurized juice by racking. You have to do either rack or cold crash to keep it from drying out all the way, as it tends to strip out the flavor if it goes all the way dry.
Click to expand...
 
i stand corrected...personally ive never gotten it that low but maybe i just havent left it go long enough
 
Two heads, sounds like a plan. I'm kinda stuck with this:

5 gallons Tree Top Apple Juice
3.3# Wheat Extract syrup
1 packet SafAle WB-06
Cooler fermenting around 65*F

I'll let it go all the way and just give it a try... why not, right?
 
racer944 said:
Two heads, sounds like a plan. I'm kinda stuck with this:

5 gallons Tree Top Apple Juice
3.3# Wheat Extract syrup
1 packet SafAle WB-06
Cooler fermenting around 65*F

I'll let it go all the way and just give it a try... why not, right?
Click to expand...

Let 'er rip! And more importantly, let us know how it tastes! :rockin:
 
Ok, just tossing around an idea here if anyone wants to speculate with me... What if instead of water, you used pasteurized apple juice with a hefeweizen extract kit? I'm VERY tempted to try this during the upcoming week. Any experience? Any words of wisdom?
 
racer944 said:
Ok, just tossing around an idea here if anyone wants to speculate with me... What if instead of water, you used pasteurized apple juice with a hefeweizen extract kit? I'm VERY tempted to try this during the upcoming week. Any experience? Any words of wisdom?
Click to expand...

you would have a hell of alot of alcohol.....dont forment too hot or your gonna get some nasty banana esters
 
OK, my "apfel bier" is done...kegged and carbed! I stopped fermentation at 1.012...it was just starting to lose some of that appley taste that I wanted to preserve. So, down from 1.060 that's an ABV of 6.3%, not bad! It's been in the keg for about 1.5 weeks now, and is starting to clear very nicely but still has some cloudiness to it. I may at some point throw a cinnamon stick in there...but for now it's very tasty and a bit more "quaffable" than an 8.5% apfelwein. When yours is done, let's do an exchange!

Now for my next experiment...2.5 gallons of a very lightly hopped blonde ale, mixed with 2.5 gallons of apple juice. It has the potential go down in history as the worst beverage idea ever...but it could be very good :).
 
TwoHeadsBrewing said:
OK, my "apfel bier" is done...kegged and carbed! I stopped fermentation at 1.012...it was just starting to lose some of that appley taste that I wanted to preserve. So, down from 1.060 that's an ABV of 6.3%, not bad! It's been in the keg for about 1.5 weeks now, and is starting to clear very nicely but still has some cloudiness to it. I may at some point throw a cinnamon stick in there...but for now it's very tasty and a bit more "quaffable" than an 8.5% apfelwein. When yours is done, let's do an exchange!

Now for my next experiment...2.5 gallons of a very lightly hopped blonde ale, mixed with 2.5 gallons of apple juice. It has the potential go down in history as the worst beverage idea ever...but it could be very good :).
Click to expand...

I'm looking forward to hearing how it turns out. I hope you keg!
 
this sounds like a great idea, I cant belive that it hasnt been documented yet. But isnt DME ~20% non-fermentable? wouldnt this add to the sweetness?
 

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