Adding Apple Juice in Beersmith or Brewmate

[davekippen]

Just wondering how to account for apple juice as a fermentable in Brewsmith or Brewmate. Anyone add it? If so, what characteristics did you give it? Maybe you just sub in some amount of sugar in the program to fake it out?

 

[davekippen]

A little more detail (and a bump) I am making Brandon O's Graff, and I am trying to figure out what the OG will be. Its basically a malt beer and apple cider fermented together.

1 gal of wort:
Steep some Crystal 60 and 120 for 30 mins (shouldnt affect the OG)
1 lb light dme
1 lb amber dme
1 lb dark dme
Bring to a boil for 15 minutes with a tiny amount of hops
Then add 4 gallons of apple juice
Ferment. Im using US-05

Any thoughts on how to figure the expected OG?

 

[beergolf]

If you look at the nutrition label it will give you the amount of sugar per serving. Multiply it out and just add that much sugar in the brew software. It will give the expected OG.

 

[davekippen]

Good call. I was trying to over complicate it. So the math works out like this:
1 gal of juice has 416 grams of sugar.
Im using 4 gallons, so thats 1664 grams
That works out to be 3.66 lbs.
Add that to the other fermentables, and my OG comes in around 8.9% A little high for what I am trying to make!

Thanks for the advice.

 

[beergolf]

I understand the over complivate it thing. I have figured out that simple is best.

I did a saison that was a partial boil and used apple juice to top it off. Came out good, but did need some age to mellow.

 

[erikpete18]

So I've been trying to do the same thing today to put my apfelwein recipe in, and came up with a slightly different method that might be handy for you. I was also using some apple juice concentrate, so I had to figure out how to enter that as well, and hopefully people can check my math to make sure it makes sense.

Here's what I did. My apple juice was 28g/8oz, which works out to 448 grams per gallon of juice. If you convert that to pounds per gallon, it comes out to about .99 pounds per gallon. Then I entered in a new ingredient as a sugar and called it apple juice. Since I'm assuming that the apple juice is 100% fermentable, you can convert the pounds/gallon directly to the yield % (since 1lb of sugar per gallon will give you 100% yield). So my new ingredient "apple juice" has a yield % of 99, which gives a potential of 1.046. Then all I have to do is enter the number of gallons used as pounds (ie 4.5 gallons as 4.5 pounds).

In your case, your 416g of sugar works out to about .92 lb/gallon, so you could just enter in a new ingredient as a sugar with a yield% of 92 and then you should be able to add 4 pounds of that ingredient, and it should come out the same as your other calculation.

For the apple juice concentrate, this method worked much easier than anything else I could come up with. The concentrate had 26g of sugar/2oz which worked out to 1664 grams per gallon. Converting that to pounds per gallon gives me 3.67 pounds per gallon. For some reason Beersmith allows you to enter >100% values for yield%, so I was able to enter 367% yield for the "apple juice concentrate" ingredient, or a potential of 1.169. Same thing with the juice, then I could enter in the gallons as pounds.

Hopefully my math is correct!

 

[davekippen]

Nice! Im no math whiz but it looks good to me.

 

[fballplayer75]

So I've been trying to do the same thing today to put my apfelwein recipe in, and came up with a slightly different method that might be handy for you. I was also using some apple juice concentrate, so I had to figure out how to enter that as well, and hopefully people can check my math to make sure it makes sense.

Here's what I did. My apple juice was 28g/8oz, which works out to 448 grams per gallon of juice. If you convert that to pounds per gallon, it comes out to about .99 pounds per gallon. Then I entered in a new ingredient as a sugar and called it apple juice. Since I'm assuming that the apple juice is 100% fermentable, you can convert the pounds/gallon directly to the yield % (since 1lb of sugar per gallon will give you 100% yield). So my new ingredient "apple juice" has a yield % of 99, which gives a potential of 1.046. Then all I have to do is enter the number of gallons used as pounds (ie 4.5 gallons as 4.5 pounds).

In your case, your 416g of sugar works out to about .92 lb/gallon, so you could just enter in a new ingredient as a sugar with a yield% of 92 and then you should be able to add 4 pounds of that ingredient, and it should come out the same as your other calculation.

For the apple juice concentrate, this method worked much easier than anything else I could come up with. The concentrate had 26g of sugar/2oz which worked out to 1664 grams per gallon. Converting that to pounds per gallon gives me 3.67 pounds per gallon. For some reason Beersmith allows you to enter >100% values for yield%, so I was able to enter 367% yield for the "apple juice concentrate" ingredient, or a potential of 1.169. Same thing with the juice, then I could enter in the gallons as pounds.

Hopefully my math is correct!

I dont mean to bump this old tread but did these calculations work for OG? I want to make a cider soon.

 

[MindenMan]

Pardon me for being brain dead, I still don't get how many gravity points are made from a 12 oz container of frozen apple juice concentrate added to 1 gallon water
Help.

 

[erikpete18]

I dont mean to bump this old tread but did these calculations work for OG? I want to make a cider soon.

It was fairly close, which is about all I was going for. The values that I got were a little lower than I had calculated, but I'm not sure if that's due to the fact that I put the concentrate in first and then added the apple juice on top of it so mixing might have been off, that I added too much apple juice and it diluted the concentrate, or that my math is wonky. After doing the math I probably should have measured my volumes better and mixed it really well to confirm that it was working correctly, but at least its close.

Pardon me for being brain dead, I still don't get how many gravity points are made from a 12 oz container of frozen apple juice concentrate added to 1 gallon water
Help.

If you take a look at the nutrition information on the side, it should tell you the amount of sugar per serving size. Take that and calculate how many grams of sugar there are in the entire container, then convert that to pounds. I believe that apple juice is mostly glucose and fructose, so I just use the corn sugar (glucose) conversion of one pound giving 46 points (or 1.046) per gallon. Take the number of pounds you get in your concentrate, multiply it by 46, and that should be the gravity if you were to dissolve it in water to one gallon. For instance, my concentrate had 26 grams of sugar per 2 fluid oz, or 156g in the whole 12 fl oz container. That works out to .344 pounds, times 46 points gives me 15.8 points, so one container dissolved with enough water to make one gallon should give me a gravity of 1.016. Hope that helps!

 

[fballplayer75]

It was fairly close, which is about all I was going for. The values that I got were a little lower than I had calculated, but I'm not sure if that's due to the fact that I put the concentrate in first and then added the apple juice on top of it so mixing might have been off, that I added too much apple juice and it diluted the concentrate, or that my math is wonky. After doing the math I probably should have measured my volumes better and mixed it really well to confirm that it was working correctly, but at least its close.



If you take a look at the nutrition information on the side, it should tell you the amount of sugar per serving size. Take that and calculate how many grams of sugar there are in the entire container, then convert that to pounds. I believe that apple juice is mostly glucose and fructose, so I just use the corn sugar (glucose) conversion of one pound giving 46 points (or 1.046) per gallon. Take the number of pounds you get in your concentrate, multiply it by 46, and that should be the gravity if you were to dissolve it in water to one gallon. For instance, my concentrate had 26 grams of sugar per 2 fluid oz, or 156g in the whole 12 fl oz container. That works out to .344 pounds, times 46 points gives me 15.8 points, so one container dissolved with enough water to make one gallon should give me a gravity of 1.016. Hope that helps!

It does thanks !