Fermentability numbers for apple juice?

I'm a very happy user of BeerAlchemy for OS X. Brilliant user interface, very good selection of ingredients... but...

I've brewed Brandon O's graff cider brew, and would like to add it as a recipe to my app. There is no ingredient comparable to apple juice. BeerAlchemy (and BeerSmith, as I understand it) has the ability to allow new ingredients to be added to the database. I've been told that I could easily add apple juice as a fermentable, but I need some more info.

BeerAlchemy asks for the following: Color (in SRM), Extract (in %), Moisture (in %), and two options, Is it a Grain? and Must be Mashed.

The Extract %, I'm assuming, is the percentage of fermentable sugars in the ingredient. The closest info I can Google is this:

Apple juice, canned or bottled, unsweetened, without added ascorbic acid -- Sugar Content: 10.90g per 100 grams of juice

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Also, this:

Fifty-one samples from 12 geographic growing regions of Turkey and 3 varieties common for production of apple juice concentrate were processed to apple juice and analysed for their sugar composition. Enzymatic analyses was used to determine soluble sugars of apple juice. Glucose, fructose, sucrose, total sugar concentrations (g/l) and total soluble solids (%) of apple juices were ranged, respectively, as follows: 9.30-32.2, 66.10-96.00, 8.5-55.10, 110.90-164.40, 11.80-18.60. Cultivar significantly influenced the content of all the sugar analysed. Significant differences in fructose and sucrose concentrations have also been found between some growing areas.

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Finally, this.

This is about the limit of my knowledge of chemistry, that I know nothing of chemistry. I could use a little help in figuring out the numbers required. I thought it kind of sounded like a great Labor Day study challenge!

The sugar content of apple juice varies, but the sugars are 100% fermentable. The solids are basically cellulose.

A (good?) approximation I have used in my own little brewcalc spreadsheet is to give apple juice 45 pts/gallon based on the apple juices I have seen saying there is ~28 g (e.g. 1 oz sugar) per 8 oz serving or 1 lb/gallon). Check your apple juice label nutritional information...it should have a similar value.

This seems to fit with other empirical sources I have seen where straight juice has an OG of ~1.045-1.05).

When I enter a GRAFF recipe using this value, it comes out about right ~1.063 according to what GRAFF makers report for OG.

Of course don't multiply the apple juice points by how many gallons used... 1 gal/gal

Hope this helps.. I will be putting together some GRAFF this weekend and maybe I will put this to the Hydrometer test.

Hehe... here is a detailed analysis.

http://www.fruitforum.net/apple-juice-some-observations.htm

Interesting that he states that 1 lb sugar/gal has an OG of 1.037. Most Brew Calculators I have seen give sugar (Dextrose/Sucrose/DME) 45-46 points.

You could just take an SG reading on a sample of AJ. The SG is the number that your software is looking for.

dontman said:

You could just take an SG reading on a sample of AJ. The SG is the number that your software is looking for.

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Heheh that would be too easy :cross:

"The difference between theory and practice is that in in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

dontman said:

You could just take an SG reading on a sample of AJ. The SG is the number that your software is looking for.

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OK, great idea! Now, since I only know how to use a hydrometer for measuring from SG to FG, and nothing about what the numbers mean, would, say, 1.060 mean it's 60% extractable? I have to convert that reading into an Extract % number... and I'm assuming my Moisture % would be 100%, since it's a liquid. Sound about right?

Here's a bit from BeerAlchemy's help file:

%Extract - the percentage of the ingredient that theoretically is extractable. For sucrose this is 99%, for dried malt extracts and light colored malts around 80% and less for dark malts. This can usually be fouind on maltsters websites.

%Moisture - the percentage moisture in the ingredient. Currently BeerAlchemy doesn't use this value but may do in the future so enter it if you know it. For pale malts it's usually around 4% and slightly higher for caramel malts.

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Thanks for the great help so far!

Take a look at that link I posted above. A pretty good explanation.

SG basically tells you how much sugar is in your solution based on the increased density (or 'gravity' when compared to pure water) of the solution. Pure water has a density (Specific Gravity) of 1.000. As you add solutes (in this case sugar) you get an increase in the density compared to water.

If 1 lb of sugar in a gallon gives you a SG of 1.046 (sometimes referred to a "46 gravity points") you get a starting point to measure how much fermentables there are. As the sugar gets turned into alcohol + CO2 + H2O, the specific gravity of the solution drops. Since the amount of alcohol produced by a given amount of sugar can be calculated, the difference between OG and FG shows how much sugar has been converted and thus how much alcohol is produced in fermentation.

% Extract is a measure of how much fermentable sugar is extracted from the grain during the mashing and sparging process. For all extract brews using DME and/or simple sugars, you pretty much have a complete extract of sugars into the wort by mere virtue of dissolution.

In your example above, a gravity of 1.060 means you have managed to extract an amount of sugar into your solution equivalent to about 60/46 lbs per gallon (assuming 1 lb of sugar/gallon yields SG= 1.046).

You can find the Gravity points by plugging in single ingredients in units of lb/gal (or kg/L if you operate in metric) in any of the available Brewcalcs and noting the calculated OG.

The higher the gravity of the wort, the more POTENTIAL alcohol is possible assuming 100% conversion. You can actually get BELOW 1.00 since alcohol is less dense than water. The lower the finishing gravity, the more alcohol you have. In wine making, yeasts are rated as to alcohol tolerance (the amount of alcohol they can survive in) which is a limiting factor on how much alcohol is produced from a very high original gravity (Wines/meads start around the 1.1 and above mark usually). In beer, where the starting gravity is lower (1.04-1.06 generally) Beer yeasts are rated more on "Attenuation" or how much of the sugar they convert before they poop out. There is some relation to alcohol tolerance here, but there are other factors at work as well.

Hence, choosing the right yeast for the right starting gravity to yield a beverage of desired sweetness and alcohol content.

Any clearer?

It may be asking for extract % but that is not the important number. The important number is Potential Gravity or Potential Yield or something like that. I use BeerSmith and it does have a place for the Extract % but above is a space for "Potential"

Can you look at another malt ingredient such as "Pale Dry Malt" and look for a number like "1.046" It is this space that you put the SG reading you get from your apple juice. The extract % would then be 99% much like sucrose.

dontman said:

It may be asking for extract % but that is not the important number. The important number is Potential Gravity or Potential Yield or something like that. I use BeerSmith and it does have a place for the Extract % but above is a space for "Potential"

Can you look at another malt ingredient such as "Pale Dry Malt" and look for a number like "1.046" It is this space that you put the SG reading you get from your apple juice. The extract % would then be 99% much like sucrose.

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Nothing like that, which seems odd. I may have to follow up with the programmer. I don't see a way I can attach pics, but it's literally asking only for the five bits of info in my original post above (may have to pay for premium subscription here, dunno).

White Sugar: Color-0.0 SRM, Extract%-99.0%, Moisture%-0.0%
US Caramel 60L malt: Color-60.0 SRM, Extract%-73.0%, Moisture%-5.5%, Is a Grain? YES

I'll see if the developer has more info on this, and if that's all of the info needed, how he's calculating. Thanks again.

Take a look at the Tasty Brew Calculator here:

TastyBrew.com | Recipe Calculation

It has a column where you can specify MASH or EXTRACT or STEEP. If you select MASH it will apply the entered Brewhaus efficiency number. If you specify EXTRACT it will use the values as they are.

You can approximate Apple Juice by picking any Dry Malt Extract or Sugar (46 points) and adding it as if it were 1 lb per gallon (e.g. for a 5 gallon batch, you would simulate apple juice by adding 5 lb DME or Corn Sugar or Cane Sugar.

Putting in the GRAFF ingredients as 1 lb Amber DME, 1 lb Light DME, 5 lb Cane Sugar (ALL AS EXTRACT) and 0.5 lb Crystal 60L (STEEPED) in 5 gal, you would generate a Starting Gravity of 1.065 (which is a bit high, but in the ballpark..)

Maybe seeing this in action will give you an idea how to massage your program.

dontman said:

It may be asking for extract % but that is not the important number. The important number is Potential Gravity or Potential Yield or something like that. I use BeerSmith and it does have a place for the Extract % but above is a space for "Potential"

Can you look at another malt ingredient such as "Pale Dry Malt" and look for a number like "1.046" It is this space that you put the SG reading you get from your apple juice. The extract % would then be 99% much like sucrose.

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Extract % and ppg/potential gravity are the same thing only expressed differently. Some maltsters use one or the other - neither is more correct (Briess for example use % extract - two figures actually, coarse and fine grind).

http://www.brewingwithbriess.com/Assets/PDFs/Briess_PISB_2RowBrewersMalt.pdf

Sucrose gives around 46 ppg and is around 99-100% extract. Pale malt is around 36ppg which gives 36/46=78% extract.

In the email the OP sent to me he mentioned the sugar content of apple juice as being 21g in 240ml - ie 8.75%. AFAIK, there's not much else in apple juice apart from sugar that would contribute to the gravity calculations so in this case I would use that as the extract figure required by the program. Forget about the moisture - it's not actually used in the calculations. Color?-Have a guess - I would expect it to be very low a couple of Lovibond at most.

The last trick is something that is undocumented. The program assumes that all ingredients give an extract that has a similar fermentability to that derived from malt (a simplification I know). Sugars clearly don't. What the program does is look at the ingredient name and looks for 'sugar' somewhere in it. If it's there it assumes 100% fermentability (another simplification). It also checks for 'lactose' and if that's in the name it assumes 0% fermentability. So, if you think that the sugars in apple juice are highly fermentable then used the word 'sugar' in the name somewhere.

steve_flack said:

Extract % and ppg/potential gravity are the same thing only expressed differently.

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This was interesting stuff. As far as the above statement, how would you convert Points per Gallon Potential into Extract %.

Since they are same thing, it follows that you should be able to look at the one figure and do some conversion to the other.

For example if you take an sg reading on apple juice and the reading is 1.026then you know that AJ contributes 26 points for every gallon added. Does this number convert directly to an extract % figure or do you have to some other research such as total sugars dissolved into the addition, etc?