Apple Pie Cyser

Since doing more studying and sampling research on them this summer, ciders and meads have really taken the front seat on my brewing calendar.  This batch combined these two strains: cyser is the love child of mead and cider, a beverage neither DeAunn nor I had tried, but which sounded damned delicious to both of us.  We picked up a couple gallons of fresh-pressed cider (and a couple of carving pumpkins) a couple weeks before Halloween from a local cider mill, and added a two pounds of local honey.  A vial of the White Labs English Cider yeast and we were off.

I kept the fermentation temp down, hoping to avoid a lot of hot alcohol presence; this was planned for this Christmas season, so aging needed to be kept to a minimum. The work paid off: after nearly a month in primary, it emerged semi-dry, with great apple and honey character, and just a touch of alcohol presence.  Moving to secondary for a month of further aging, I added Bentonite to help it drop clear.  Along with that I'm including a few pie spices of DeAunn's choosing: cassia bark (cinnamon), grated nutmeg, and clove.  For the spicing step, I split the cyser into two one-gallon batches, one of which received oak along with the spices.  I found the cassia at our old spice shop back in Chicago over the summer, and really like its sweet, spicy flavour; I added a couple pieces of it to each secondary.  My understanding is that a little bit of clove will go a long way, so I'll split a single clove in half, one part for each batch; trying to avoid overdoing the nutmeg, I'll add just a little of that as well.  To further reduce their impact, I'll give the cinnamon and oak a week or so head start before adding these more assertive spices.

The challenge now will be to make sure that the spices don't throw off the excellent flavour it had coming out of secondary.  Which means periodic sampling every few days; how sad.  As long as I'm careful to not expose it to an infection (and don't "sample" half of it before bottling) I can look forward to a nice seasonal drink for the Yuletide season.

Apple Pie Cyser

Projected OG: 1.085
Volume: 2 gallons

Fermentables
2 gallons Farnsworth Farms Cider
2 lb Cox Honeyland Honey

Yeast
WLP775 English Cider

Extras
1 tsp Pectic enzyme
1 tsp Yeast nutrient
1 tsp Yeast energizer

Brewday: 20 October 2012
Fermented in swamp cooler in low 60s F ambient

Secondary: 17 November 2012
SG: 1.010
Great semi-sweet finish with just a little alcohol harshness; will have to monitor in secondary to make sure the spices don’t get too overwhelming
Split into two 1-gallon batches for aging - initial spices added

Spicing:
.2 oz Saigon cassia cinnamon - both batches
1.1 oz Medium-dark toast oak, bourbon soaked - Batch B

Spicing, part 2: 28 November 2012
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg - both batches
½ clove - both batches

Bottled: 30 December 2012
FG: 1.005
ABV: 10.5%
Bottled still.

Tasting: Sharp with lots of apple snap.  The cinnamon came through like a champ, even adding a bit of a tongue-numbing quality; will plan to increase the amounts of the other spices next time to keep up with it.  As of today (3 March 2013) the oaked version is still aging; don't tell DeAunn, she'll tear through it like a chainsaw.

Home toasting malt: Gluten-free edition

Here in Salt Lake we had our first big snow of the season last weekend; in about a day and a half we had more accumulation than we had all of last winter.  For me, of course, this ushers in thoughts of beers on the darker, richer, and heavier end of the scale.  I've never brewed an oatmeal stout, but have contemplated finally doing so; the slick, smooth oat character balancing the stout roast struck me as a proper aim for this more tempestuous season.  Just adding oats to a standard stout recipe wouldn't be enough, though; it seemed only proper to give this adjunct a bit of toasting to tease out a bit more character.

Running parallel with my desire to enhance the flavour of a cold-weather classic was my ongoing desire to produce alcoholic beverages for my gluten-sensitve spouse.  During the summer, DeAunn's tastes tended toward cider and perry, with the occasional semi-sweet melomel added to this sweeter, effervescent mix.  Now that the seasons have changed, though, her tongue has headed back for a more malt-based alternative; the local GF beer option, Epic Brewing's Glutenator, has really hit her fancy.  I haven't experimented very much at all yet with GF malted grains, but since I know how much she loves dark beers, an oatmeal stout with an oat malt base seemed like a great GF winter offering.

On to the grain prep.  It started with a pound and a half of organic flaked "quick" oats from Whole Foods.  The web and homebrew forums (and perennial favourite text Radical Brewing) offer plenty of information on giving grains a light toasting; a slightly deeper colour and mouth-watering, nutty, "oatmeal cookie" smell was pretty easy to achieve.  But what about the roasted-grain colour and character for the GF version?  For this, I set out to roast a small amount of quick oats to that chocolate or roasted barley level required for the right look and taste for a stout.  The oat-based beer was going to be a 2-gallon test batch as it was, so just a half pound of roasted oats struck me as plenty for this outing.  I found instructions on home roasting barley to chocolate malt or roasted barley levels; given the thickness of the oats I toned down the temps at first, but in the end moved into the suggested range, which yielded the proper results (along with smoke starting to billow from the oven, as the instructions promised).  The roasted oats ended up a bit lighter in colour than I'd hoped, but definitely have the right acrid, coffee-ish aroma.  I'm confident that they'll also give me my desired SRM; if it ends up on the brown side, though, I'll add a bit of coffee to enhance all aspects of this stout.  Both sets of toasted/roasted grains were given a minimum of two weeks to mellow before they were allowed anywhere near a beer; the "young" charred flavours and aromas of these grains can easily overwhelm a batch, so they require proper time to come into balance.

I'm looking forward to brewing the "regular" oatmeal stout later today.  I miscalculated on my LHBS's supplies for the GF version, though; it seems they don't stock oat malt, so the test batch will have to wait for now.  If this works out, I may have a great way to keep my wife in beverages of her choice during the coming months of dark and cold.


Toasted oats
-Thick layer (1.5 lbs) @ 350F for ~2 hours
-Turned every 15 min
-Wt reduced by .7 oz by the end
-Deep golden colour, "oatmeal cookie" aroma while toasting

"Roasted" oats
-Thinner layer (8 oz)
-350F for 2.5 hours, 450F for 40 minutes
-Turned every 15-20 minutes
-Wt reduced by .5 oz by the end
-Chocolate colour, similar to Cocoa Pebbles, honestly; burnt, acrid odour by the end, accompanied by smoke

Both batches left to air out for 2+ weeks