Hey all! I'm looking to brew with actual apples and am a little unsure of how to do it and extract the best apple flavoring. I'm doing a 3 gallon boil, 2 gallon water top off, extract batch with specialty steeping grains. I have two ideas on how to brew with the apples: 1) Take the apples, skin them, core them and blend them into a pure, put that into a cheese cloth and use that in the boil. 2) Skin them, core them, chunk them up and bake the apples at 200f until they're essentially dried apples and then put those dried apple chunks into a cheese cloth and add them into the secondary fermenter (a 5 gallon glass carboy). The beer I'm looking to make is an apple pale ale with a lot of apple flavoring. I'd like to avoid using an apple flavored extract so any help on how to brew with actual apples is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
I've never done a brew with whole apples, but 100% natural frozen apple juice concentrate works very well for what you are trying to achieve. It would be similar to your idea of peeling and pureeing them, but with all the hassle of those steps and filtering removed.
You should juice them and keep all the sediment out of your beer, which is otherwise likely to cause haze and volumetric problems (I mean, the apples would soak up all your precious beer and leave you with a half batch of appley gloop). Juice 'em. If you don't have a juicer, buy one, they're fairly cheap. I've been using mine every October for many years and it's not dead yet, and makes the best juice you've ever tasted. Oh, and uh... this recipe has won me a lot of awards, including a 2nd Best of Show: http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=71478&p=662452&hilit=smoked+harvest#p662452 Proof: http://brixies.bobbo.net/brixtoberfest/
Here's a link to a search of this forum using 'apple' as the search word. I recall a couple threads about apple flavoring in a beer, but I don't recall if it asked about whole apples. http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/search/31777517/?q=apple&o=date&c[node]=8
There was a long thread a little while back about whole apples. I think the consensus was DON'T use whole apples http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/adding-apple-caramel-to-a-brown-ale.326292/
Ive brewed with apples quite a few times, the best way IMO is to do this 1 - Keep it malty - too much bitterness will fight the flavor and the sweetness 2 - apple is a light flavor and will drive off easily, DO NOT BOIL apples or juice, not to mention set the pectin 3 - Boil down the base beer to make a very thick syrupy wort 4 - Dilute your syrup with apple juice (fresh pressed is best) that includes tart/sweets (gravenstein/newtown pippins), tarts (granny smith), and something with some tannin (crabs) 5 - Use a med/dark crystal malt
