Apple Wheat Beer...help with suggestions

[mtmax]

I am thinking of making an Apple Wheat beer using our american wheat style hefe as the base recipe and adding some apple.
Q?
1. What is the best way to get apple flavor?

2. Add Apple juice after primary fermentation?

3. Add Apple Peels in a hop bag during the whirl?

I have access to some fresh Montana Apples and an apple press that would allow me to make fresh cider...

Thanks,

Max

[liammckenna]

If you're going to use fresh cider or peels, watch out for pectin. It will make your beer unfilterable although I note you're making a hefe so it shouldn't matter too much although it will interfere with settling.

If you're going to use fresh cider, boil it for 20 minutes or at least hit it with sulfite before adding to the primary.

Go with high acid apple varieties ie Granny Smith. You're looking for lots of malic acid to give you the flavour you seek. If you use a sweet variety, flavours will 'wash out' during fermentation.

There are some excellent varietal concentrates widely available.

Pax.

Liam

[REV]

We have a winter seasonal in the fermenter right now that we used fresh apple pressings in. We got the pressings from a local grower and added 5 Gal. right at the end of the boil. OG was 18.5 its down to about 6.5 and still has a good bit of apple to it. It's a dark roasty beer so no plans to filter it. I still have 5 gallons of pressings I plan on adding post fermentation to bolster the apple flavor and aroma. Batch size was 8 bbl.

[Jephro]

Rev,
I am curious as to the vitals of your grain bill, if you care to share any of it that is. So far that sounds delightful.
Jeff

[Steve M.]

MAX,
We tried a cider brew a year or so ago. We wanted a malt/cider balance and used 300 gal. fresh apple (MacIntosh) cider in a 14 bbl brew.
We found in small trial "boilings of cider" that the more you boiled/heated, the more of the VERY sweet apple flavors were extracted, like green apple candy.
Not wanting the sweetness ourselves, we added the cider just before knock-out. The main thing we missed was not accounting for the loss of evaporation, due the time of the addition, of 300 gallons of cider, so the balance was off.
Although it was still an enjoyable brew (and a fun experiment), the brewhouse smelled like a cider mill!
Nice apple cider flavors though, no problems with the sulfurs, just could've used a bigger malt backbone, which probably would've been corrected by taking into consideration the lack of evaporation and thereby using less cider.
Just our experience,
Steve

[GeorgeJ]

i've considered making a 'Bragget' beer (without hops) where i was going to use malt, honey and apple peels in the boil.

re: pectin hazes. simply get yourself some Pectolaze - they enzyme prevents this. i used it in a batch of cider i pressed last year and it seems to do the job.
however, if you're doing an apple wheat beer, were you planning to filter it? or keep it nice and proper with a cloudyness in it? for the latter i wouldnt worry about a pectin haze