Beer Forum

Hello All -
I was drinking one of my hard ciders yesterday, and it was a pretty dry and tart. I started thinking that this type of flavor might be nice in a beer - maybe like a biere de garde with a dry apple finish. Has anyone played around with mixing beer and cider? If so, did you add apple juice to your fermentation with your wort, or did you ferment the beer and cider separately and blend? I have heard New Glarus makes a hybrid like this, but unfortunately we can't get New Glarus in MI. Any info, be it something you've actually done or just theorized is welcome

-Adam
Primary: summer wheat(attempted Oberon clone)
Secondary: berliner weisse, Jamil's Oud Bruin
Bottled: cream ale, hard cider

Ephemere by Unibroue...

http://www.unibroue.com/en/beers/ephemere_apple/product

I think its friggin great on a summers day.

My award-winning recipe for apple ale can be found here. I use fresh apple cider instead of water. You can wait until October and pick up some great cider from your local orchard, or you can get a good cider with no preservatives, not from concentrate, called Simply Apple, at your local supermarket any time of year.

http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtop ... lit=+apple

I believe there's a name for this, but I can't seem to find it; it's not listed in the BJCP.

Cyser = Mead & Apple
Braggot = Malt & Mead
Pyment = Grape & Mead
Melomel = Fruit Mead
Metheglin = Herb Mead
? = Grape & Malt
? = Apple & Malt
? = Grape/Mead/Malt

Coming up short on those last 3. I know I've heard a name for each between the years of the BN & BBR. Like hell if I could find them back

Dave: Have you tweaked the recipe since your post from the DB forums in 2007? I've never used smoked malt. How does that come through?

I haven't brewed the apple ale in a few years -- time to brew it again. So the recipe remains the same. The smoked malt is subtle and not overpowering. I've made a 100% smoked malt beer before and even then it's tasty. Tastes like bacon. But just using a pound or so, it will be subtle and not too strong. Just make sure you use the German smoked malt and NOT peat smoked. If you used over a pound of peat smoked malt, it would be so strong you'd ruin it. Peat smoke tastes like an electrical fire -- nothing like bacon.

By the way...

Apple + malt = fruit beer. Plain and simple.

Dave: regarding your recipe, I have a question about the batch size. In the recipe, it says it's a 3 gallon batch. You're adding the gallon of cider at flameout. I'm trying to put the batch (sans cider) into Promash. Am I setting 3 gallons as the batch size and getting more like 4 after ferm because of the post boil cider addition, or does the 3 gallons include the cider?

3 gallons is the final batch size. So you actually want to brew about 2 gallons. If you want more, you could easily just double everything and come up with 6 gallons -- that's 4 gallons brewed, plus 2 gallons of cider added.