Something other than water in recipe...

If you mashed your grain with a liquid that was already loaded with sugar this would inhibit your extraction of sugar from the grain. Imagine trying to wash the soap out of a sponge using soapy water.

 

Your pH will likely be too low for an efficient mash. You could try and adjust it with salts, but then it would just plain taste weird I bet. I'd maybe produce a high gravity wort then dilute it with the cider in the fermentor. Go 50/50 that way.

 

I've heard of people doing something similar with wort with good results (using wort from one mash tun to sparge another), but I'm sure efficiency would suffer greatly... worth a try maybe.

 

Good analogy HB.

I think you are better off looking into adding the cider in the fermenter. Look into Graff - it's a cider/beer hybrid of sorts. I think it's technically more cider than beer, but you can probably tweak it.

 

I recently had a beer where apple cider was boiled down on its own then added to the wort. It seemed to get some nice flavor from the cider.

 

Sean Lawson uses partially boiled maple sap for brewing "water" in the Maple Trippel.

 

I think you're just going to end up diluting the flavor with that strategy. A better approach would be to shoot for a lower volume from the boil than your total batch and top off after chilling with your cider. Boiling apple juice drives off flavor and also leads to haze as it will set the pectin in the fruit. That's why the best (hard) ciders come from unpasteurized fruit.

 

On second thought though, a Graff-type beverage really isn't so much an ale anymore. For a competition maybe you want the cider to play second fiddle to the important part - the beer. My vote goes for adding only a small amount after primary to taste. What spices did you have in mind - cinnamon has to be one, right?

 

So for best results going in that direction, he should probably heat (hold at 165 or so for 10 min) - not boil - unpasteurized cider separately, cool and top off the wort?

 

If he gets his hands on unpasteurized juice then I'd recommend no heat at all. Just sulfite it with 1 campden tablet per gallon and let it sit for a day.

 

Ah ha - gotcha. Get rid of that wild yeast the easy way.

 

My theory was it would mess with efficiency as well, though it might be interesting to see if a quart or so would have any lasting impact.

 

A quart might be just enough to screw up mash pH, assuming it was good before. Could be wrong, and haven't done the math. Flavorwise, I suspect it would be very minimal.

 

On a relevant note, BrewingTV has a Graff episode coming out this Friday. It's like they knew we were going to discuss this.

 

I'm so glad they started this series up again. It is one of the main reason I shop with northern brewer, especially since they got rid of their flat rate shipping. Last weeks cider episode was pretty cool

 

Love the series - have to catch up on some episodes. Haven't seen he cider episode yet but following it with a graff episode makes perfect sense.

 

I did an American Pale Wheat with half water and half grapefruit juice a couple years ago. It turned out pretty well. It was extract, though, so I didn't have to mash with it. With the same concept, you could add whatever liquid you wanted after the mash, though.

 

what about freeze concentrating the cider to add fermentation?