Soo... The idea was to create a holiday-themed beer (yeah, this is the season for the usual gingerbread-flavored beers), but a little differently. I was eating my grandma's awesome apple pie, when suddenly this dialogue played in my head (among me, myself and I):
– Man, this pie is good!
– Tell me about it!
– Why can't you buy a beer like this?
– You mean a beer with apple pie flavor?
– Yeah, why not?
– Because that would be crazy!
– Hell, yes, that would be crazy! So?
– The crazier the better!
And then my grandma asked me what I'm thinking about, because I looked so lost in my thoughts. And with a smile, I answered her: You'll see.
The task was clear: making a beer that tastes like apple pie. And it was almost the season for the holiday beers, so I've decided to design it to pack the features of a good holiday beer (no, not the gingerbread flavor): to have a great body (like Mrs. Santa in her twenties), and to have a relatively high alcohol content. And a balanced malty sweetness wouldn't be so bad either. So what did I come up with? With amber ale!
No, actually not with the usual one, rather with an imperial amber ale (Remember? Higher alcohol content). Or I may as well call it rebel amber ale. Lick salt, BJCP.
And how to make the beer taste like apple pie? Of course with apple and cinnamon! Regarding the apple, my first thought was apple juice, but I ditched the idea and stuck with apple slices.
The ingredients (for 12 liters):
- 3,09 kg Maris Otter malt
- 0,37 kg Munich I malt
- 0,21 kg Rye malt
- 0,21 kg Caramunich II malt
- 0,21 kg Carabohemian malt
- 0,04 kg Carafa Special III malt
----------------------------------- - 12 g Marynka (60 min)
- 12 g Marynka (30 min)
- 10 g Chinook (15 min)
- 10 g Chinook (flameout)
----------------------------------- - 1 pkg Fermentis US-05 yeast
Est. OG: 1.059, 53.9 IBU, 37.1 EBC (data source: BeerSmith 2)
As you can see, the bitterness is way out of the recommended amber ale range (20 - 40 IBU), it's almost like an IPA. But for the increased gravity (and hence sweetness), I wanted the beer to have similarly increased bitterness, too. After all, amber ale is all about the balance between malt and hops. I've picked Chinook as aroma hop in order to compliment the apple pie flavor with its spiciness.
The planned mashing temperatures:
- 67 °C - 60 min
- 74 °C - 10 min
67 °C saccharification rest for medium body and 74 °C for mashout.
Some photos from the brewing day:
 |
| Mashing |
 |
| Boiling the wort |
 |
| Cooling the wort |
 |
| If you don't have a fridge... |
As you can see, I tried a new cooling method for my fermentation bucket. I covered it in a wet towel, and kept the towel constantly wet. This way the air around the towel was cooled by the evaporating water. According to my measurements, this way I can keep the air temperature around the bucket 3-4 °C lower than the ambient air temperature. Unfortunately during the vigorous fermentation period, it doesn't help much since the process is highly exothermic. During the first two days, the fermentation temperature was 24-25 °C, then it became calmer, and the temperature dropped to 21-22 °C. The ambient air temperature in the room was 23-24 °C during the whole fermentation.
After the primary fermentation was complete (gravity: 1.014), I decided to split the beer into two different fermentation buckets. I wasn't entirely sure if my apple pie beer would come out as I wanted, so it was a save-at-least-the-half-of-it-in-case-of-you-fuck-it-up solution. The not-apple pie half (6 liter) was dry hopped with 15 g Chinook for 5 days.
For the apple-pie half, I washed one big and one medium-sized apple, sliced them into 1 mm thick slices, put them into a baking pan, ant put it into the oven for one and a half hours at 110 °C. Meanwhile I soaked one cinnamon stick (crushed) into alcohol (70%) for an hour. Both treatments were done in order to disinfect everything that goes into the beer.
When the apple was ready, I put the crushed cinnamon and into a hop bag, and poured the alcohol into a fermentation bucket. Then I put the baked heat-treated (half-baked) apple into the bucket, too. After that, I racked the beer (6 l) from the primary bucket. Well, it wasn't a nice sight. :)
 |
| The victims |
 |
| Looks good |
 |
| Apple & cinnamon |
 |
| Racking |
Two hours after installing the airlock on the secondary bucket, the beer began to ferment vigorously again. After 3 days, the audible signs of the fermenting apple (because it was the only fermentable stuff now) ceased.
Five days after the racking, I've tasted the beer. And I was disappointed. The beer didn't have any apple or cinnamon flavors. So I racked the beer again, because I was afraid that the apple slices floating on the beer become infected. During the racking, I boiled two crushed cinnamon sticks in 2 dl of water for 10 minutes, then added it to the beer, hoping that this will increase at least the cinnamon aroma and flavor. During the boiling the whole apartment smelled like cinnamon. It was awesome.
 |
| After the second racking - yummy |
2 days later came the bottling. Still no apple or cinnamon flavor. I was furious. I've put another 3 crushed cinnamon sticks into the boiling priming syrup. It was my last hope.
 |
| The 3 crushed cinnamon sticks in the boiling priming syrup |
 |
| This is how the priming syrup looked like before adding it to the beer |
I wanted to name one of my beers Lucy for very long time. And why? This is why. This comic is hilarious on many levels. And the color of this beer seemed perfect for the name, so there it is. The dry hopped version of the beer became Lucy. And do you remember this scene from Tropic Thunder?
When I was making the apple pie beer, I had the feeling that I went full retard. There. We have the second name.
Then time came to design the labels. This is the first time that my hand-drawn graphics appeared on the labels.
I was satisfied with the result. I mean with the labels. And the beers? Well, the Full Retard developed a bad off-flavor. It has a plastic-like aroma and flavor that overpowers every other notes. What's more, there isn't any cinnamon or apple note in the beer. Not even a little bit. (One minute of silence for my apple pie beer, please.) But if I want to be positive none of my beers had this good head retention.
 |
| Full Retard |
When I was bottling Lucy, I was more than satisfied with the result. It had a stable malty backbone, and the dry hopping gave a nice hoppy character to it. That beer was outstanding. Now, after two months, from the bottle, it's just ok. The dry hopping vanished with just a little trace of it, and now it's all about the hoppy bitterness. Now it tastes like an English IPA with greater maltiness. The IBU is too high. If I do it again, I'll stick with 40 IBU.
 |
| Lucy |
I'm not really sure where the Full Retard's off-flavor came from. I've sanitized everything as usual, maybe the double racking was too much for the beer. Or the apples. Or I don't know. Which is the most annoying thing; if I knew the reason, next time it would be avoidable. But I'm on it.
Soon a new year begins, and I hope that I can share countless new beers, recipes and stories with you. Happy new year! :)
