Beer Forum

Anyone ever tried racking onto dried apples in a secondary? Would this give any apple flavor or would it just dry it out and make the beer cidery? Thinking of putting some winter spiced ale on some dehydrated apple slices.

I remember reading a recipe in Radical Brewing about a Fruitcake old ale where Randy Mosher suggested using dried fruit and adding that to the beer for a secondary fermentation. I do believe he first rehydrated the fruit by pasteurizing it with 170 degree water for about 10-15 minutes or so before decanting and adding the fruit to the fermenter. I don't think the apples would dry out the beer too much either. Depending how much you have you might not even notice the difference. Maybe someone with some experience in this category will chime in. But that is how I would handle adding the fruit back to the beer.

Thanks for the tip I've been meaning to pick up a copy of radical brewing maybe this will motivate me to get to it. I was thinking of only racking a liter or so to a secondary that way i'll have some basis for comparison and won't ruin the batch if it sucks.

In my last experiment I primed a liter of my milk stout with hot cocoa mix. Havn't tried it yet but the kegs almost gone now so I'll have to drink it soon in order to compare. Problem is there is still cocoa stuck to the sides of the bottle It does not seem to dissolve well. Next time I'm going to pick up some of those cocoa nibs from more beer.

Radical Brewing is a great book. Not only is it an interesting read but it provides a lot of great insight and baselines for brewing with different spices, fruits, and grains. Plus there are some interesting cross-style recipes in there too!

Pharmbrewer wrote:

In my last experiment I primed a liter of my milk stout with hot cocoa mix. Havn't tried it yet but the kegs almost gone now so I'll have to drink it soon in order to compare. Problem is there is still cocoa stuck to the sides of the bottle It does not seem to dissolve well. Next time I'm going to pick up some of those cocoa nibs from more beer.

In case anyone was curious this experiment did not work out well. I got a gusher and the remaining beer was filled with cocoa powder. However all is not lost as I think the basic flavor of a chocolate milk stout is tasty. Next time I'm going to ramp up the roastyness of this brew and through some cocoa nibs on it. To be continued...

Pharmbrewer wrote:

Pharmbrewer wrote:

In my last experiment I primed a liter of my milk stout with hot cocoa mix. Havn't tried it yet but the kegs almost gone now so I'll have to drink it soon in order to compare. Problem is there is still cocoa stuck to the sides of the bottle It does not seem to dissolve well. Next time I'm going to pick up some of those cocoa nibs from more beer.

In case anyone was curious this experiment did not work out well. I got a gusher and the remaining beer was filled with cocoa powder. However all is not lost as I think the basic flavor of a chocolate milk stout is tasty. Next time I'm going to ramp up the roastyness of this brew and through some cocoa nibs on it. To be continued...

They put sugar in cocoa mix. That's where you gusher is coming from. I use plain Hershey's Cocoa. No sugar, nothing but cocoa in there. I've used it in the boil kettle and the fermenter. Check out the original Jamil Show, the Black Forest Stout episode.

Grist Licker wrote:

They put sugar in cocoa mix. That's where you gusher is coming from. I use plain Hershey's Cocoa. No sugar, nothing but cocoa in there. I've used it in the boil kettle and the fermenter. Check out the original Jamil Show, the Black Forest Stout episode.

Yeah I knew about the sugar, I was actually counting on it to prime my bottle. I must have done my calculation wrong or something. I had a Liter bottle and figured out the number of grams of sugar I would need by dividing the total # of grams needed to prime a 5 gal batch by 19. I think I may have gone wrong by calculating the grams of corn sugar and the cocoa mix uses sucrose. Even if the calculation would have been correct It still would have been to messy to try again.

I'll definitely check out the black forrest episode though. Thanks.

I wouldn't put anything insoluble into a bottle unless it will settle out completely. I had great sucess with a chocolate oatmeal stout bu including a couple of tablespoons of dark cocoa powder (the pure stuff) in the mash (I think that I got the idea from a Session show from back in the day with Bison brewery (?), where the brewer mentioned it in the mash. Great chocolate smell and taste, and it went really well with the oatmeal stout profile. I'm guessing that when you hammer this out a chocolate milk stout will be great.

That has nothing to do with apples, but I suspect that if you use fresh dehydrated apples (as in they were dehydrated when they were fresh, and they are still not old) you might get a nice apple flavor as well as a decent sugar boost, you may even considder including it at the end of primary as a feeding option.