American Wheat - Add Cider to Primary?

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permo

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I just brewed up an american wheat ale (10 gallons)

8 pounds pils
8 pounds red wheat
2 pounds munich
mash at 152
Wyeast 1007
1 oz millenium at 90
1 oz willamete at 15
1 oz vanguard at 5
2 oz vanguard at FO/Steep
2 oz willamette at FO/Steep
5 oz belma at FO/Steep

(Yes sir....9 oz at flameout)

Fermenting at 65


HEre is my problem. To encourage haziness I ran the wheat through the mill twice at a very fine setting, created almost a flour. I am now about 3/4 gallon short in the fermenter, I think because of the increased absorbtion from the fine grind.

Thinking outside the box, I have a 1 gallon jug of unfilterd/unpastuerized apple cider in my fridge......wondering if boiling this for a few minutes, cooling it and adding to the primary might not only help with my volume shortcoming, but create a nice fruit component....or completely ruin a great wheat ale?!
 
Do you keg or bottle? You aren't going to get much apple flavor from that relatively small % of apple juice. My buddy does a few different apple saisons, and it takes every bit of 6-8 lbs of cubed apples to get a subtle apple flavor.

All you are really going to get from that % of apple cider is some extra fermentable sugars that are going to bump the ABV. Not going to really hurt the beer, but I don't think it's going to accomplish what you had in mind.

HOWEVER, if you keg, then you can dump that cider into the keg after the beer's done and you are at serving temps (where the yeast won't ferment out the fruitose) and you will accomplish exactly what you want.

Do you keg?
 
Add the apple cider post-fermentation once your beer is at serving temps in the keg. That'll get the apple flavor you're after.
 
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