Once upon a time, way back in my early days of homebrewing one of my very first recipes I created was Apfelwein. I had prepared the batch so when I arrived back from my tour of Germany I would have a good idea of what real Apfelwein should taste like. The recipe I used was a modified version of Ed Wort’s awarding winning Apfelwein. This time around I stayed closer to his recipe, though I still made a couple small modifications to fit what was available for ingredients.
A Spin on Ed Wort’s Apfelwein -
Ingredients
- 4 x 3.78 L of Sun-Rype Pure Apple Juice (not from concentrate)
- 1.2 KG of dextrose
- 2 x WC-1118 Champagne Yeast (rehydrated)
- 2.5 L of RO Water
Directions -
1) Add the apple juice and dextrose to a cleaned and sanitized carboy. Make sure to stir it until all the sugar dissolves. Top it off with RO water.
2) Rehydrate the yeast and pitch it.
3) Wait.
I meant to add yeast nutrient, but as usual I forgot after pitching the rehydrated yeast. I double pitched my yeast this time too, something I have never tried before. I am hoping this will provide a lower final gravity without affecting the flavour too much. If it comes out tasting like hooch I will probably leave it bottled for 6+ months.
It may look like cloudy, gross apple juice but in several weeks it will be delicous Apfelwein.
The original gravity reading was 1.070-1.072. If I can get this to ferment out to around 1.000 I will be looking at some ass-kicking, 9%+ ABV Apfelwein. The total cost of this batch would be around $35.00 or around 90 cents a pint, give or take a penny.