Apple Ale ??

[pantsmachine]

Its a good life i take it?

You get 10 months, we get 10 days. I wonder where Summer goes for the rest of the year since we've got most of it sorted between us?

[Laripu]

Its a good life i take it?

It is for SWMBO. I get to sit behind a monitor for many hours a day. For the next two weeks +, I'm experiencing about 8°C, in Virginia on a business trip. The luxury of endless summer must be bought by software engineering.

Actually, I shouldn't complain. My life has improved trmendously since I emigrated from Canada to the US. Not that there's anything seriously wrong with Canada, but winter and taxes are bad enough.

You get 10 months, we get 10 days. I wonder where Summer goes for the rest of the year since we've got most of it sorted between us?

Ahhhhh... good question. I'd say Australia.

[Laripu]

I'm back from my business trip, and I've tried the snout of Cybeerg, the apple ale. Here are my observations:

At refrigerator temperatures, it tasted and looked like a balanced amber beer, not like a cider at all. As it warmed a little, a number of flavours became distinctly apparent:
1. Slightly apple-y sourness. You can tell there's apple in this beer.
2. Evident hop bitterness, but not nearly as much as in a bitter. Considerably more obvious than in a UK-style brown ale. (More than Newcastle, for example.)
3. Slight sweetness. Not as much as I wanted, but it is in balance with the hop bitterness and the apple sourness. I used alt yeast instead of the Windsor I was originally intending to use, and it might have ended sweeter had I used the Windsor.

The hop bitterness makes this a beer, and not a cider. Also, the body is consistent with a beer, and not a light beer either. That's a bit of a surprise. Maybe the crystal malt and lactose contributed to that.

It has only been in bottle for 3 weeks. I intend to try it again in a week, then again in another week. I expect the flavours to meld. I'll report the results.

[Laripu]

I've had another, and the flavours are blending nicely. The body is light for a beer with this level of sweetness. The sourness is now starting to taste more like 'apple-ness' (if I can use that word), but it's subtle, just enough to let you know there's apple in there. Mostly it's just a very light-bodied apple-ish bitter. It ought to be good for warm-weather quaffing. Luckily there's plenty of that around here.

I deem this recipe an unqualified success.

[Laripu]

I've been drinking this for a while now and it really is very good. I noticed that it was better as it warmed up, so yesterday I tried one at room temperature. It was fantastic. I think from now on, when I want one, I'll just stick it in the fridge for 10 or 15 minutes to cool a little bit. That will be optimum, I hope.

[Laripu]

I've previously found that there are many apple ales out there, so this wasn't really an original idea.
Now I've also found that it has a name: graff.
Here are some other recipes that call it by this name:

http://hopville.com/recipe/122417/home-brew/graff
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/graff-m ... er-117117/
http://www.brew-dudes.com/malted-cider-recipe/574
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum// ... opic=39021