Looking for a Leinie's Apple Spice Clone

I know a lot of beer snobs didn't like this beer, but I liked it a lot and want to re-create it since it isn't available anymore. I have never made my own recipe so I wouldn't even know where to start with this. As I recall the flavor was dominated by apple and spice flavors which overpowered the natural beer flavor. It tasted a lot like a spiced unfermented cider, which makes me think there would be no apple in the fermentation and an extract added in the secondary, however Leinie's says they used fresh apples. I'm thinking that maybe starting with a lighter corn beer lager recipe and adding apple extract, cinnamon and a bunch of non fermentable sugar in the secondary might get me close. Any ideas or does anyone know of a clone recipe, can't find one anywhere.

Here are some tasting notes from beer advocate.

This is from a press release

Lightly hopped and well-balanced, Leinie’s brewmasters blend fresh apples and a hint of cinnamon spice to deliver a beer that is refreshingly drinkable cold or heated up and served warm.

“Last year Leinenkugel’s entered exciting new territory with the launch of Apple Spice and consumers responded,” said Jake Leinenkugel, president of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company. “Due to its hot and cold serving options, unique combination flavors, and limited seasonal supply, Apple Spice is perfect for fall gatherings and holiday parties.”

Leinenkugel’s Apple Spice features more than 2,000 pounds of real apples per batch (one batch equivalent to 165 barrels). Other Apple Spice facts:

- 50 pounds of cinnamon per batch, used as a spice
- 60 pounds of real Wisconsin honey per batch
- Malted wheat in addition to malted barley

Seeing that it is a wheat beer it almost makes me think that they may make it like they make their summer shandy, which from what I understand is half sunset wheat and half fresh squeezed lemonade at bottling. You may look into making a Sunset Wheat Clone and switching the blueberry extract for an apple and cinnamon flavoring when you bottle (or even just apple juice). But I am certainly no expert and honestly have never had teh beer your talking about, but it would be worth a try. KingoftheSwill posted his recipe for a Sunset Wheat clone here on the forums I actually have this fermenting right now but most likely won't be tasting it til atleast April. I tried pasting the link to his recipe in my post but am unable to do so. Just do a search for Sunset Wheat Clone. I beleive it is the first thread that comes up and it is on the 2nd page.

Found it Sunset Wheat Recipe

Good call on adapting from a Sunset Wheat recipe. I think this should get me close, now I just need to try and figure out how much apple extract and cinnamon to use. Or I could use honey, cinnamon and frozen apple juice concentrate in the secondary. This was a pretty sweet beer, but that might be too much.

I originally wanted to make summer shandy, which is why i'm making the sunset wheat. I made the 5 gallon sunset wheat and am most likely just going to drink it like that but will also experiment by adding lemonade to it after I pour the beer. Kinda ghetto but I thought it'd be worth a shot. You could do the same thing with Apple juice or even cider. I have a feeling the 2 oz of flavored extract won't be enough apple flavor that your looking for so you might want to go with the juice idea. I recently had a Sunset wheat and the blueberry is almost undetectable, but it does seem to mix really well with the coriander.

If I was going to try this experiment, I would add maybe a dozen or so apples worth of peels. I think (but not positive) that you'd get the most flavor and least fermentable sugars that way. Never had the beer though....

The leinie's flavored beers are based on honey weiss with flavors added post-fermentation. The 'real apples' works out to be about a pound in a 5 gallon batch, which I wouldn't bother with. Cinnamon works out to about .4 oz per 5 gallon batch (The honey works out to be 0.5 oz per 5 gallons, hehe).

I would be tempted to find what is in a spice packet for making mulling cider (maybe one you like or at least tastes good if you try it) and add that at bottling if there is nothing too weird in there. The little bit of acid that might be in a mix like that would probably give enough impression of apple for an Apple Spice clone.

Hey, I'm curious if you ever tried this? My dad used to really like this beer, and I am thinking of trying a small batch sometime in the future. I'm interested to see how it came out.