Apple Crisp Ale - December 2014
Two-gallon batch. All-grain. The recipe came from the Brooklyn Brew Shop book titled Beer Making Book. The inclusion of a small amount of the chocolate malt grain seemed odd to me.
Ingredients
We brewed this beer on Sat, Dec 13, 2014 or 12-13-14 if using the U.S. date display.
The ABV is suppose to be 5.5%
- American 2-row malt
- Caramel 60 malt
- Chocolate malt
- Aromatic malt
- Fuggle hops
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- Hallertau hops
- 4 apples, peeled and sliced
- we used red delicious and/or cameo apples, purchased at the Toledo Farmers Market from a local farmer called Wit Orchards.
- English ale yeast, such as Wyeast London III or Nottingham
- we used Nottingham
- for two-gallon batch, we are suppose to use 6 tablespoons of honey, but we'll cut it back to 4 tablespoons to prevent over-carbonation
Boil
60-minute boil.
At the start of boil, both cinnamon sticks and the Fuggle hops were added.
After 59 minutes of boil, the Hallertau hops were added.
After boil ended, the heat was turned off and the apples were added. We placed a lid on the pot and let the apples steep for 20 minutes before chilling the wort.
Chilling
After the steep period ended, the apples were removed, and the pot of wort was placed into an ice bath in the sink.
The rest of the steps, such as chilling the wort, moving wort to primary fermenter, and pitching the yeast were the same as other beers.
The cinnamon sticks were removed from the wort before the wort was added to the fermenter.
Photos
Spent grains. Deb made cranberry butter in the morning, and the jars rest in the background.
At the end of boil, diced apples were placed in the wort for 20 minutes.
Bottling
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015, we bottled 21 bottles. We tasted some leftover beer, and it tasted fine. It seemed like a light or mild beer with a little fruity flavor. This should be a decent beer.
For the bottling sugar, we used only three tablespoons of raw local honey, which was half of what the recipe recommended.
The honey was the dark-colored version from Dee's Bee's who sells at the downtown Toledo Farmers Market on Saturdays.
Tasting
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015, we tried our first bottle, and we both enjoyed it. Smooth, easy-drinking beer. Mild taste. Nothing extravagant. Just pleasant.
Mar 27, 2015
On Fri evening, Mar 27, I consumed two bottles of this apple crisp ale, and the beer tasted excellent. Maybe this beer improved with age. It's a pleasant, smooth-drinking beer with some hints of fruity flavor. I'm surprised how well this one tastes.