One of these days, I'm going to remember to start blogging about things other than new beers. Today's post though is about another beer that we've been planning for a long time. I have always been a fan of supporting local businesses whenever possible and I really like when businesses team together to create a product. I have always wanted to brew a beer using local ingredients, but the Alabama climate doesn't do us many favors as far as being able to grow brewer's quality barley or hops. So when I asked Mike if we could start a series of beers featuring local ingredients, the plan was to think outside the box a little bit. The apple ale that we brewed yesterday is the first beer that has featured a local ingredient... Apple Cider from Isom's Orchard.
If you have never had Isom's apple cider before, you are missing out on one of the best things you can ever taste. Their cider is produced with a blend of apples and sometimes pears. It is unpasteurized and is much higher in sugar content than store bought apple juice.
One of the reasons I decided to brew this beer is that a lot of people have asked us recently if we would consider making a cider... The answer is no. Legally, we can not make a cider because it is considered a wine, not a beer. Our manufacturing license does not allow for the production of wine, so we can not make a cider. The idea was to make a beer with a significant amount of apple flavor, similar to New Glarus' Apple Ale from Wisconsin.
One of the challenges of brewing a beer like this is that the sugar from apples (mostly fructose) is 100% fermentable. That means that once it is fermented, the cider would have a specific gravity lower than water (Probably around .998). That low specific gravity is what we refer to as being dry. One of the complaints a lot of people have when they drink hard cider for the first time is that it is not sweet, but rather it is pretty similar to white wine. That is where having some unfermentable sugar (Maltotriose and Dextrines) from malts can actually improve the flavor of the apples for people that do not like that dryness.
So the base beer that we brewed is similar to a Nut Brown Ale. With a little bit of caramel malt, Victory, Biscuit, Special Roast, and Oats, the flavor contribution from the malts will be noticeable, but minimal. The focus is really on the apples for the flavor, but the base beer should help to give the beer a little bit of body. The hops are kept to a minimum at 5 IBU.
Measuring the specific gravity of various juices, I found that Mott's Apple Juice had a specific gravity of 1.040, Earth Fare's Organic Apple Juice (Pastuerized, Not from Concentrate, No Water Added) was 1.050, and Isom's cider came in at a gravity of 1.060. This poses another small problem for us as a brewery... When I did a test batch, Isom's did not have cider ready at the time, so I did a proof of concept batch using Earth Fare's juice. In a 5 gallon batch, I brewed 2.5 gallons of beer to a specific gravity of 1.050 and added 2.5 gallons of 1.050 apple juice. To remain legal, at least half of the fermentable sugar has to come from wort, not from juice. So we had to drop the amount of apple juice we used so that the sugar contribution was at least 50% wort.
The next challenge is actually probably a larger problem and is less controllable for us. When yeast metabolizes sugars, it acts kind of like a kid that wants to eat candy instead of dinner. It will try to metabolize all of the simple sugars (Fructose in this case) before metabolizing the more complex sugars (Maltose) and it can create yeast health problems. So we needed to make sure that we utilized a high yeast pitching rate and that the wort was very well aerated.
The beer is now fermenting away at a slightly warmer temperature than we typically use. We are using a very flavorful English Ale Yeast to encourage ester production which will make a fruity flavorful yeast character to compliment the apple flavor. If everything goes well with fermentation, the beer should be ready in just over two weeks. It will be a lot of fun to see how the beer is received. Big thanks to Isom's Orchard for teaming up with us to help us create this new, unique beer!
The other exciting thing for us is that we had an extra 75 gallons of cider after using it for the beer. Now the we have a distilling license, we are going to ferment this 75 gallons separately and make Apple Brandy (also known as Calvados)! It will take us a few months of aging it on toasted oak spirals before we are ready to share.
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