Steeping/mashing grains in juice?

[wingedcoyote]

I'm planning a graff for pretty soon, something very light on the grain side and heavy on the cider -- probably just a pound or so of medium crystal, along with a bit of 6-row if necessary for conversion. The idea being not so much to make a cider/beer hybrid, but just to bring a note of caramelly sweetness to my cider.

What I'm wondering is, when I go to mash the grains for this, could I just use some of my apple juice as the liquid instead of water? Obviously the PH and mineral situation would be quite different from water, but I can't think of anything obvious that would prevent it from working off the top of my head. NBD if it doesn't work, but I figure it couldn't hurt to avoid diluting the juice.

EDIT: After posting noticed that there have been a couple threads about this before, but nobody came back after actually trying it. Would love to hear about it if anyone has done this or has any scientific insight, otherwise I might just have to try it and see what happens!

 

[bernardsmith]

I've made apple ale only twice but frequently make cider. Take what I am about to say with however large a pinch of salt you think appropriate but if you use apple juice to mash the grains you are essentially boiling off all the volatile flavor molecules from the apples. I would think that if you want to make graff the one thing you really don't want to lose are the apple notes.
In fact you are not diluting the apple juice with the wort you are adding wort to apple juice and fermenting (hopefully) a flavorful wort with a flavorful cider. That said, it strikes me that there is no good reason why you might not experiment with the ratio of AJ to wort (1:1 or 2: 1 or 1:2 or 3: 1 or 1:4 etc- to emphasize either the apple notes and its mouthfeel or the malt notes and its mouthfeel or to have both the apple and malt equally emphasized...

 

[wingedcoyote]

Well, you wouldn't be boiling anything, just raising to somewhere in the 150s for the mash, and it would be a small portion of the total juice. And you in a sense do "water down" the apple juice with wort, because you would have less total "appleness" (whatever all is in apple juice that is not in water) than if you use juice to make the wort.

That said, especially since I'm probably just using Costco juice for this, I suppose it probably wouldn't make much difference if I just use water for the mash and then make up the difference with frozen apple concentrate.

 

[bernardsmith]

OK... but even 150 degrees is still quite high and don't you then take the liquid from the mash and boil that? so the temperature of all the AJ you used to mash and the AJ you used to sparge is then raised to 212 degrees and then is heated until it produces a rolling boil... and if that does not destroy much of the subtle flavors from the apples especially at the point of the hot break when the proteins pull down much of the fruit particles as they coagulate and drop then I would say there is NO good reason not to use part of the volume of your apple juice to create the wort.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

I use water to steep/mash & then add frozen apple juice concentrate (FAJC) after to turn the water into juice. No heating of juice, no setting of pectins, no loss of flavour & the FAJC helps to cool it down to pitching temps. Often I'll add more FAJC than is needed, essentially "juicing up the juice." Adds a bit more flavour IMHO, and it ads more sugar, so you may want to take that into consideration for your target OG.
Regards, GF.

 

[Brann_mac_Finnchad]

Okay--the concern about losing volatiles from the juice is valid, although with just mashing you shouldn't lose all that much (but may get "cooked apple" flavour).
HOWEVER--a short boil is necessary to kill off any bugs that may have been in the grains (like lactobacillus). I learned this the hard way, making a graff the same way you are.

Now, when I make a graff, I use water for the grains, and boil it down to a concentrated syrup. If you're really concerned about the lack of apple flavour in the syrup you could add juice concentrate.