Beer: Apple Pie Ale

So this beer holds a very special place in my heart. It was the first beer that I formulated the recipe from scratch by researching how to extract flavors for hours upon hours. As I kept on reading, it seemed like an extremely hard task to get all of these complex flavors to come out properly. Spices in beer is an area that can easily become overpowering and destroy the delectable delicious flavor of beer; the combination of water, malt, hops, and yeast.

One day, along with 2 of my good friends, I decided to just start brewing beer. We started with an IPA kit and then on to a Smokey Porter. They were good, but just like with music, playing covers gets old over time. You want to create something. You want it to be your own. Someone else's recipe isn't as gratifying as YOUR recipe. 

In the "Early Days" as I like to refer to it, we just had a stove top pot and were dealing with extracts instead of all-grain. Since then, we have made many upgrades and educated ourselves much more with the art of brewing. So this year I tweaked the recipe a bit to accommodate those changes. We started the day as we usually do, going out and buying way too much beer for the half day we would be brewing. Also, as with tradition we have to eat food that is not even remotely good for us. 

Here is Ryan cutting the apples so that we can pasteurize them.

Once we were done with that, it was time to heat up the water for mashing in. If you'd like to read more about the process here is the link! Once it's heated to the correct temperature, it's time to mash in, or what some refer to  as "doughing in".

Now we wait. Depending on the recipe, there can be many different times for this. We do a simple batch sparge. There are many other ways of doing this, but with the equipment we have, this will suffice. We get an efficiency of about 68-75%, which isn't bad. For this recipe, we'll wait about an hour until we can test for starch conversion. We tested, and everything was going as planned!

Next up, we transfer the now wort to the next cooler we have to calculate how many gallons we got. We were around 4 gallons and we needed about 7. 

Next up is to lauder the wort and we do this with sparging. This way we can get more wort and get us up to the 7 gallons we want. We let that rest for about 10 minutes and then collect the wort again. Meanwhile... this is Ryan, again. This doesn't even portray how beautiful this smell is. 

Now we're ready to start the boil where we add the rest of our ingredients. This recipe calls for a 60 minute boil, but you can go for any amount of time again depending on the recipe. 

Once boiled, we need to cool the wort down to 68-72 degrees so that we can have a happy yeast. We have also recently included doing a longer cold break and whirlpooling to remove the excess trub.

Now that everything has been cooled and the liquid and solids have separated a bit, it is time to transfer the wort to the primary fermentor. We need to create some aeration so that the yeast is again, a happy yeast. No one wants a pesky yeast. After this, we pitch the yeast!

Now we wait about a week for the yeast to convert the sugars to alcohol and we transfer to secondary fermentation for some more clarity. There is much argument over whether this step is necessary but for some reason, I like doing it. I have never encountered infection or any other problems from this.

We didn't run into many issues this brew day. However, the brew store did not give me the 11 pounds of grain I asked for. As I was brewing I could tell that there was definitely not enough grain in the mash tun. Oh well. This just means that the alcohol content will not be the 8.2% I wanted but more around the 5.5% range judging from the 1.055 OG reading we got from the hydrometer. 

Normally people don't release their recipes to people, but I don't care. The slogan we use all the time with our "brewing company" we have is "Ourbeer is your beer" and I intend to keep it that way. So here it is! This is with the 8.2% alcohol version. If you wanna try for a lower ABV, just adjust the grains accordingly. 

Original Gravity:

1.081

Final Gravity:

1.019

ABV (standard):

8.19%

IBU (tinseth):

30.14

SRM (morey):

19.06

Fermentables

Amount	Fermentable	PPG	°L	Bill %
11 lb	American - Pale 2-Row	37	1.8	66.2%
2.5 lb	American - Victory	34	28	15%
0.5 lb	American - Caramel / Crystal 80L	33	80	3%
0.5 lb	American - Carapils (Dextrine Malt)	33	1.8	3%
2.125 lb	Maple Syrup	30	35	12.8%
16.63 lb	Total

Hops

Amount	Variety	Type	AA	Use	Time	IBU
0.5 oz	Calypso	Pellet	13	Boil	60 min	22.12
1 oz	Cluster	Pellet	6.5	Boil	10 min	8.02

Mash Guidelines

Amount	Description	Type	Temp	Time
5.4 gal	Bring to 175 to warm mash tun	Sparge	152 F	60 min
4 gal	Bring to boil	Sparge	172 F	10 min
Starting Mash Thickness: 1.5 qt/lb

Other Ingredients

Amount	Name	Type	Use	Time
1 tsp	Gypsum	Water Agt	Boil	60 min
1 each	Whirlfloc Tablet	Water Agt	Boil	15 min
0.5 tsp	Apple Pie Spice	Spice	Boil	10 min
4 each	Cinnamon	Spice	Boil	10 min
2 each	Vanilla Bean	Spice	Boil	10 min
1 tsp	Vanilla Extract	Spice	Boil	10 min
5 each	Apples	Spice	Primary	0 min

Yeast

Danstar - Nottingham Ale Yeast

Attenuation (avg): 77% Flocculation: High Optimum Temp: 57 - 70 °F Starter: No Fermentation Temp: 72 °F Pitch Rate: 0.5 (M cells / ml / ° P) 185 B cells required

Notes

Pasteurize apples at low temperature until they turn into an apple sauce.