Gunslinger's Graff with crabapples

I am interested in brewing this: http://brewingtv.com/recipe/2012/9/18/gunslingers-graff.html

I potentially have access to a lot of crabapples, but have zero experience with them.

Does this seem like a good substitute for apples or should I hold out for apples? How would the flavor be different?

Also, if I'm juicing crabapples or apples, do I need to sterilize the juice with potassium metabisulfite first before using them in this recipe?

Any thoughts appreciated! Thanks!

Did you ever brew this?

I really enjoyed The Dark Tower Series.

I did last weekend! My dad was wrong, haha, and when I went to gather the "crabapples" he told me about, they were actually just apples! They were uncultivated and had a great sour tartness to them. I'm hoping they will work out pretty well. After mixing 1.5 gallons of wort and 1 gallon of apple juice from them, the OG was 1.050. I'm using California V yeast, so we'll see what happens!

If anyone is curious, here is the recipe I made. It is a combination of several other Graff recipes that I found online.

I made 1.5 gallons of wort and combined with 1 gallon apple juice in the primary.

Pale Ale Malt 1 lbs 21 oz
Oatmeal 7 oz
Roasted Barley 6 oz
Smoked Malt 5 oz
Special B Malt 5 oz
Chocolate Malt 4 oz

Added 3.5 oz of DME during boil to increase OG a little.

Centennial 0.5 oz @60
Cascade 0.3 oz @10

California Ale V WLP051 2 cup starter

Mashed at 158*F (In case the apple dries it out too much. Not really sure what to expect between the high temp mash, the apple juice and the 70-75% attenuating yeast.)

So, the OG was 1.050 and the FG after 10 days is 1.015 which is what I was hoping for! (I say FG, but I only checked tonight and don't plan to check again before bottling so we'll see–it'll be better if it stops here.)

Really anxious to hear how it turns out, I would like to make 5 gallons of something similar.

I'm planning to let this go about another month. I thinking about bottling at least half of this batch with lactose. When I tasted it last week it was quite bitter and roasty (which is good, but maybe a touch more sweet would be better). I'll see what it's like on bottling day and decide then.

I have access to lots of "crabapples" i made cider with them in 2011 which was my first pressing and after a year in bottles it was amazing. Doing a graff similar to your recipe using light wheat LME no oatmeal or chocolate malt. Instead using munic, 2 gallons cider (from "crabapples") and then a gallon of honeywater adjusted to the same og of the cider

Sounds delicious! Let us know how it turns out.

I'm excited to bottle the graff this weekend!

Got it bottled! I added the equivalent of .5 lb of lactose to 5 gallons of beer (I measured what I ended up with after siphoning off of the significant trub and measured down from there). I tasted a bit and I really think it is going to be amazing. The ABV is around 4.5%, so this will be a good (late) fall session beer, methinks. Notable smoke and roasty-ness and the 60 IBUs balance out the sweetness from the lactose.

This does sound delicious. About how much did you get after the trub? Going to try to get to mine tomorrow

Keep in mind that I used whole, wild apples in a juicer and added K-Meta and then, 12 hours later, pectic enzyme and then I syphoned off 1 gallon of juice off of the junk before adding that gallon to the wort. (In other words, all of the trub I ended up with was primarily from the malts.)
Otherwise, out of the 2.5 gallons (1.5 of which was wort), I ended up with about 2.20 gallons of finished product pulled off of the trub.
This of course will change depending on your mashing methods. I do BIAB and had had the malts double crushed. I did a 6 week primary and no secondary.
Hope this helps!

After 2 weeks in the bottles, I stuck a couple in the fridge and tried after 2 days.
They are extremely bitter (which is partly because I overhopped and undershot my OG). I've never had a black IPA, but I imagine them to be like this. It's not bad, but it lost the smoke flavor completely and isn't sweet at all, even after warming up, despite the lactose. Still drinkable!
I'll probably wait a month before refrigerating any more and see if the bitterness has settled down a little.

A month has passed and they have gotten a lot better! Still not perfect. Gonna wait another month, but I'm satisfied where they are at now (very drinkable, wouldn't reproduce though unless they get better yet).