Apple Beer recipe?

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Toppers

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Anyone have a working one? I found this one, but a bit skeptical about only 1 quart of juice in 5 gallons of water...how can the flavor possibly carry over diluted that much?

APPLE BEER:

Ingredients:

6 lbs. light malt extract 1 lb honey 1 1/2 oz. Hallertauer hops (flavoring) 1/2 oz. Halletauer hops (aromatic) 1 quart of apple juice (if you haven't made your own, choose an apple juice without preservatives from your grocery store--many preservatives inhibit yeast growth). 2 packages of Nottingham Ale Yeast (make starter).

Procedure:

Boil 5 gallons of water. Add extract and flavoring hops. Boil for 60 minutes. Add honey and aromatic hops and flame-out. Chill to 170. Add apple juice. Top off with water to make five gallons. Chill to 75 degrees and add yeast starter. Rack after one week to secondary. Bottle or keg after fermentation is complete.
 
I do make apfelwein, and lots of it. Apfelwein is not beer.

I'm talking about beer, with hops and the whole nine yards. Read the recipe I posted :)
 
Would a bunch of dried apple slices in a mesh bag work? Say, added to the wort at the end of the boil, or maybe in the primary/secondary 1 week before bottling.
 
Check this out. Pretty much, Unibroue ephemere uses apple must. I would think that you would get the freshest "apple flavor" by using overly-ripen apples vs juice.

Just a thought
 
Someone on here has made an Apple Bock. I would love to do the recipe but alas no lagerator! Do some searches on that. :mug:
 
I did an apple ale last year with the LD Carlson apple extract. 2 ounces of that per 5 gallons. I also added cinnamon, maple syrup, and a vanilla bean. It was awesome, like apple pie beer.

PM me if you'd like me to dig up the recipe (was extract/steep).

Hmmmm..... Might have just talked myself into doing this all-grain for my next brew. Will be watching this to see other extract-less approaches to the apple flavor...
 
The next time you make beer, don't strain your hops. Pitch 5 gallons of apple juice onto that yeast cake with 2# of Corn Sugar (just like Apfelwein). When it's done fermenting, transfer to secondary and dry hop with 1 oz of Spalt Hops for 10 days. It's not beer, but it makes the ladies smile.
 
The next time you make beer, don't strain your hops. Pitch 5 gallons of apple juice onto that yeast cake with 2# of Corn Sugar (just like Apfelwein). When it's done fermenting, transfer to secondary and dry hop with 1 oz of Spalt Hops for 10 days. It's not beer, but it makes the ladies smile.


Ok, ordered some Spalt hops and am going to try this. Do I put them in a grain bag or just dump them out of the bag into secondary? I haven't dry hopped so no idea how this works.
 
Ok, ordered some Spalt hops and am going to try this. Do I put them in a grain bag or just dump them out of the bag into secondary? I haven't dry hopped so no idea how this works.

Either way. I just dump them, some people use a hop bag weighed down with sanitized marbles.
 
I made an apple beer earlier this year, and it came out pretty good. I used 1 gallon of cider in the 5 gallon batch, so the apple flavor was definitely there, but it was pretty well balanced. I also used some cinnamon and nutmeg to give it that apple-pie-like flavor.

I posted the recipe for my apple beer on my blog, if you are interested.
 
You can make this too hard. Simply use any pilsner beer recipe and sub strained fresh apple cider for the water. You'll have to draw out some sediment before bottling. Make sure the cider is fresh, with no additives. It will have some wild yeast in it, so there be a variation between batches if you do not sterilize the cider before adding the yeast, and you can cut back on the malt if you wish, to adjust the sugar.
 
I'm thinking this would be a good idea for either a saison-like or tripel-like beer. The apple juice would help dry the beer out, while contributing a slight crispness and apple flavor.
 
If you replace the water with apple juice or cider you will be increasing the OG. I think this will raise the ABV quite a bit. Do you think the alcohol flavor with be over powering.
 
Malts:
3# Amber liquid malt extract
3# light DME
1 lb Crystal/Caramel 80
3 oz toasted Oats
2# Honey (boil 60 minutes)
Hops:
1oz Cascade (boil 60 minutes)
1 oz Cascade (boil 20 minutes)
1 oz Willamette Aroma (boil 0 minutes, when you turn off the flame )
Misc
1.5 tsp Irish Moss (boil 10 minutes)

Yeast: Dry English Ale Yeast,

Additives:
1 whole nutmeg roughly crushed (boil 60)
3 Cinnamon stick (boil 60 minutes)
2 whole cloves (boil 60 minutes)
1 whole fresh rough chopped ginger (boil 60 minutes)
6 lbs chopped apples that I rinsed with hot water and froze in a 1 gallon bag with water (add this to cool wort at end of boil)
32 oz apple cider/jjuice added to secondary fermenter


My OG was 1.070 , after 5 days of fermentation it is sitting at 1.018 in secondary where it is now fermenting away with the apple juice. I think this is going to hit 8% ABV by the time it's said and done.


after I added the cider to secondary, fermentation started up again. I am likely going to let this carry on for a week and then rack again and possibly dry hop and rack it onto some more crushed apples or something. Or I might just leave it alone!
 
Thanks to conpewter PMing me and this popping up in my new posts search... It's only 14 months after I promised, but...

Hærfest Spiced Apple Ale

7 pounds Munton’s extra light dry malt extract
9 oz. 40L crystal malt
1 oz. chocolate malt
5 oz. malto dextrin

1 ounce Hallertau hops @ 60 mins

1 vanilla bean – split, chopped, and soaked in a cup of Grey Goose for a week. Add to 2ndary
1 teaspoon cinnamon @ 2 mins
8 ounces maple syrup @ flameout
4 ounces LD Carlson apple extract. Add to 2ndary

1 teaspoon Irish moss

1 vial Wyeast 1098 British Ale yeast

:D
 
A friend of mine just made an amber with 2 big apples pureed and added at secondary. I didn't think that would be enough to do anything flavor wise, but you can actually smell them in the aroma. It's nice.
 
i've got a ginger apple hefeweizen in secondary right now, if it comes out good, i can post the recipe. I used whole apples for my batch, froze them to break the cell walls, pasteurized in water, and then did a quick blend so they were in about nickel sized chunks.
 
Im just curious if anybody has tried it this way and if so, how it came out. Just do like you are making hard cider, only use beer yeast and hops ? Or would the lack of grains or extract make it less like beer and more like a bitter wine ?
 
When you add the apple juice to your secondary do you boil it first?

I have never added anything to secondary but hops, which are not an issue when it comes to adding bacteria etc because they are anti microbial, but can you just pour some juice in or does it need to be sanitized first?
 
i've got a ginger apple hefeweizen in secondary right now, if it comes out good, i can post the recipe. I used whole apples for my batch, froze them to break the cell walls, pasteurized in water, and then did a quick blend so they were in about nickel sized chunks.

Yes - I'm reviving an ancient thread... Anyone know the benefit of this "freezing to break the cell walls" technique? Is this supposed to release more flavor? I kinda can't imagine that the flavor itself is in the cells of the fruit, but I dunno...

Curious...
 
when pressing the fruit it allows you to release more juices if you freeze them first and then let them thaw.
 
Haha now I realize that the recipe I got from my friend is 90% the one originally posted here, but with a few small changes such as adding some grains and spices. Also, as far as I know you cannot get unpasteurized apple juice or cider at the grocery store as it's like illegal ... You can only get unpasteurized straight from a farm itself.

Anyways, we followed the above but the OG was near 1.080-1.090 haha. So we thought we'd add more water to get it down to about 1.060 a typical OG. As such we had to add about an extra gallon of water and in the end it just diluted it down way too much. We only used 1 pack of Nottingham and did not rehydrate it. HOWEVER, at 24 hours the carboy had built so much pressure that it blew the airlock off and sprayed a 10' ceiling w the krausen haha. Lesson learned is the blowoff valve nessecity. Anyways, in the end I taste more of a cinnamon flavor (we added some) rather than apple which makes sense bc there was only 1 qt.

I'm about to redo it this weekend but use a gallon of apple cider, adding only enough water to get it to 5 gallons, leaving a crazy high gravity, and maybbeeee using 2 packs of Nottingham.
 
Malts:
3# Amber liquid malt extract
3# light DME
1 lb Crystal/Caramel 80
3 oz toasted Oats
2# Honey (boil 60 minutes)
Hops:
1oz Cascade (boil 60 minutes)
1 oz Cascade (boil 20 minutes)
1 oz Willamette Aroma (boil 0 minutes, when you turn off the flame )
Misc
1.5 tsp Irish Moss (boil 10 minutes)

Yeast: Dry English Ale Yeast,

Additives:
1 whole nutmeg roughly crushed (boil 60)
3 Cinnamon stick (boil 60 minutes)
2 whole cloves (boil 60 minutes)
1 whole fresh rough chopped ginger (boil 60 minutes)
6 lbs chopped apples that I rinsed with hot water and froze in a 1 gallon bag with water (add this to cool wort at end of boil)
32 oz apple cider/jjuice added to secondary fermenter


My OG was 1.070 , after 5 days of fermentation it is sitting at 1.018 in secondary where it is now fermenting away with the apple juice. I think this is going to hit 8% ABV by the time it's said and done.


after I added the cider to secondary, fermentation started up again. I am likely going to let this carry on for a week and then rack again and possibly dry hop and rack it onto some more crushed apples or something. Or I might just leave it alone!

So you had 1.070 OG without the juice? Did you only put 4 gallons total in primary since you know you'd be adding a gallon of cider?
 
I made an apple beer last fall. It was basically a brown ale with 5 lbs of apples on top of it in the secondary. It aged well and tasted great, but I would say that the taste of the apples was barely present. This year I think I'll top with a gallon of unpasteurized apple cider.
 
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