Adding crab apples to beer?

[basswulf]

I've had a good harvest of crab apples this year but still have plenty of crab apple jelly left from last year. I had a look at a wine recipe but it requires some extra ingredients and equipment I don't have and, while I've had good results with a crab apple cider before, my wife wasn't too keen on it (or cider in general). She suggested that perhaps I could use it in a beer.

I have reached a point where (on a small scale with BIAB techniques) I'm able to turn out some decent brews and I've been working through some of the recipes in Graham Wheeler's British Real Ale book with good results. The idea I had in mind was to take a simple recipe (like the Exmoor Gold I recently bottled, which is just pale ale and a couple of different hop varieties) but, before pitching my yeast, to add a couple of litres of juice extracted from the crab apples along with enough sugar to keep the mixed wort sweet and at a reasonable starting gravity. With the brew length I run to (typically about 6-7l into the fermentor) that would be about a 30% addition, which should impart a fairly distinctive character on the results.

I don't stand to waste a lot of ingredients if it goes wrong but, since searching hasn't yielded many clues (here and on t'internet, results are mainly about cider) I thought a quick ask for comments wouldn't go amiss.

Cheers,

Wulf

[YeastFace Brew Co.]

Poppyland do a Crab Apple Saison. Very nice it is too.

[boingy]

I'd expect it to mostly be horrible but there is only one way you are going to find out for sure.

Crabapples are the sourest things know to mankind but do have a decent sugar content so you may not need to add sugar to keep the OG up.

[timbo41]

Do a crabapple graff. If nothing else it will be unique and a couple of gallons won't break the bank

[basswulf]

I'll try the experiment then and post back what I get. For less than the price of an average pub pint round here and a bit of time, I'll either end up with seven or eight bottles of something unique and special that will contribute to the wider world of homebrewing or something unique and special that I can use to top up the slug traps out in the polytunnel. I'm hoping for for the former but I think it's worth a punt.

Watch this space.

Wulf

[seymour]

Sure. Why not? I would brew a basic amber ale, average ABV, low IBU. Blender-up the crabapples into a slurry, then add directly to the fermentor with some anti-pectin enzyme and hope for the best.



This last spring I planted a baby crabapple tree of my own and have been mulching with my spent grains.
So if you strike upon the magical Crabapple Ale recipe, please share!

[wilfh]

I've got this on the go from earlier I'm the year. I added a couple if litres of wild fermented cider to a wheat beer to ferment out as a wild beer. Going to have a look at this later in the week. When I may bottle depending on taste and fg.

[seymour]

I've got this on the go from earlier I'm the year. I added a couple if litres of wild fermented cider to a wheat beer to ferment out as a wild beer. Going to have a look at this later in the week. When I may bottle depending on taste and fg.

Bold idea. Can't wait to hear how it turns out. If it's good, you should definitely save some of that wild yeast slurry for reuse!

[basswulf]

My experiment is now well underway - in the fermentor and getting going. I did use the Exmoor Gold recipe although with a reduced quantity of Challenger hops. I'd already chopped and boiled the crab apples for a few minutes, extracting a couple of litres of juice which I'd kept in the fridge for a few days. I added enough brewing sugar (dextrose) to bring that liquid up to about 1.040 and added that about 10 minutes before the end of boil along with some Styrian Goldings.

The hot wort went into a plastic jerry can overnight and I got it in the fermentor last night when my reading suggested a gravity of 1.050 - that's about the same as I got from the plain recipe last time so the crab apple addition didn't push it far off.

It is far too early to boast about the final result but the first indications (I normally keep the slurry from the bottom of the fermentor in a glass in the fridge overnight, where the heavy particles start to settle, giving a bit of the unfermented wort to sample) are promising - honeyed is the word that comes to mind rather than sour. It will probably get bottled sometime over the weekend or early next week (Nottingham yeast, which is a fairly fast worker) and then I should be able to report back with a fuller verdict by mid-December.

Cheers!

Wulf

[basswulf]

Results of what I've now christened "Golden Crab" were very satisfactory. The crab apple addition is detectable but not overpowering, playing well with the other flavours. Compared to the base brew of Exmoor Gold, the taste is as if I'd added another kind of hop. I will definitely consider repeating this next year although I'll probably be just about through my stocks of 2012 crab apple jelly by then!

Probably the most important point to reiterate is that fruit addition wasn't pressed crab apple juice, which would probably have been very sour, but water that was boiled with chopped crab apples and then sweetened to a medium gravity level. Results my also vary on variety of crab apple and probably even from tree to tree and season to season. My choice, for the botanically minded, was Malus trilobata, a relative of the main branch of crab apples (Malus sylvestris) which is grown mainly for the beautiful leaves as the fruit are small and green.

However, I've proved to my own satisfaction that crab apples can be a very worthwhile addition to a light coloured brew.

Wulf