In the next installment of my recipe series, here is my apple ale recipe, which I am calling New England Apple Ale. I wanted to make a full-bodied beer, that made you think of apples (and cider, and apple pie). I wanted this to hold its own as a beer first, rather than a beer-cider hybrid, or a sickly-sweet fruity beer. I think I pulled this off.
The apple notes are strong, but they are balanced by the toasty notes from the roasted barley. The cinnamon and nutmeg in this recipe are dialed down from the last iteration of this beer I brewed, and I think that helps a lot. It still reminds you of apple pie, without completely being one.
This recipe took 3rd place in the 2008 Sam Adams Tour Center homebrew contest.
Read on for the full all-grain recipe.
Jim is looking for one of Jamil’s recipes
If you are a homebrewer, or just a beer lover, I cannot recommend joining the American Homebrewers Association enough. In addition to a subscription to Zymurgy, plenty of discounts to pubs and other places beer lovers are bound to frequent, and also a subscription to Tech Talk, the AHA-only email forum. Now, there are plenty of online homebrew forums, and many of them are great. Tech Talk is one of the best (in my opinion, at least).
I had a question once, shortly after joining the AHA, so I figured I'd give it a try. Within 2 hours of the email going out, I got about 2 responses directly to my email, and another five or so responses came in the next issue of Tech Talk. It was amazing, and it proved, once again, that homebrewers are the best type of people.
So, in that spirit, I have decided to re-publish my responses to other people's question on Tech Talk here. Hopefully this will help me reach more people, in case anyone has these same questions. With that being said, if you find this useful, you will find many more helpful people on Tech Talk, so join the AHA.
So, a little while ago, a guy named Jim D. asked the kind folks of Tech Talk if we could suggest an extract version of Jamil Zainasheff's Brown Ale recipe, which was published in Zymurgy in a recent issue. Here is my response:
If you are looking for one of Jamil's recipes, and you don't have his book, you can listen to the podcast he did. He went through each recipe in Brewing Classic Styles and discusses it in some pretty good depth, as well as gives out all grain and extract versions of the recipe. The archives listing is at http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/jamil.php. There are actually two episodes on English Brown Ale, one for the southern style, and one for the northern.