Adding Caramel & Apple to a Brown Ale

[NickLesogor]

hey all!
I just joined a few buddies of mine to brew some interesting beers. We came up with the idea of a Fall-themed Apple Caramel American Brown Ale. We haven't locked down a recipe yet but I know we're going extract with this beer.

My question is (5 gal batch, DME) I've seen quite a few ways to infuse the beer with apple and caramel. Whether it's freezing the apple slices, adding just after the boil, cooking and mashing them, using apple concentrate, using 2 gals (or more??) of Apple cider in place of water, creating your own caramel/buying caramel without preservatives, or buying caramel/sugar-specific yeast. We know we have a lot of options, but which one is the best? Adding during the boil, just after, or during second fermentation?! What we want is an apple forward taste (not apple cider beer, apple flavored beer) with an end hit of caramel, all while maintaining the brown ale flavor and look characteristics.

All help and advice is welcomed, thanks in advance!

 

[Kent88]

I don't have a lot of experience adding fruit to beer, but I'd suggest adding some strong apple juice with 5 minutes to go in the boil and secondary on some small slices.

As for the caramel, that is tricky. with all that sugar fermenting out, and I think that homemade caramel uses butter, or something else oily. I keep hearing about kettle caramelization, perhaps just mix in the DME with less water than you want to boil with and boil the heck out of it until kettle caramelization occurs, then dilute and start the boil as planned?

You've picked some tricky stuff. Hopefully someone will come along who knows more than I do.

 

[NickLesogor]

Thanks Kent! We actually added 1/2gal of Cider w/ 5 mins to go in the boil as you suggested but we hadn't seen the post yet! Lol great minds.