Hi guys. I have a great recipe for an apple pie moonshine. Can I do the same recipe for a beer using a champagne yeast? Obviously I wouldn’t add the moonshine. What I have calls for boiling a mixture of apple juice and apple cider. Nutmeg… cinnamon sticks… sugar… I’d have to look at the other ingredients to remember what it is. It boils for an hour. Question is would I boil the sugar like normal or add that to the carboy with the yeast? Trying something new instead of moonshine this time. Thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!
I’m trying to figure out what you are planning to make. Is there malt involved, or just apple juice and spices?
If no malt, it sounds like a pretty standard spiced hard cider, and depending on how strongly alcoholic you want it to be, there are any number of yeast strains that will work. Champagne yeast will eat through the sugar and create alcohol very effectively, leaving a dry, wine-like cider.
I personally wouldn’t recommend any boiling of the juice, as that will destroy some of the apple flavor. Treating the juice with 25 ppm of sulfite just before adding the yeast will stun any wild yeast or bacteria present, and allow the cultured yeast to establish and outcompete them. You can get that by using 1/2 campden tablet per gallon.
I’m thinking a beer but not sure what I may get!! 
Usually when I do the moonshine I boil all the ingredients and then strain it through cheese clothe in order to eliminate the leftover spices that don’t boil. I could probably do this in a carboy for a few days and then move to a secondary straining it through the clothe so I just get the flavors from the spices. I am curious on the sugar to add in the primary since I boil typically and the sugars dissolve. I am really not sure what I may end up with. Big experiment that I don’t want to go wrong I guess… thanks!
It is just apple cider… apple juice … spices… no malt. Forgot to mention that.
Experiments by their very nature go wrong…otherwise they would just be ‘the way’.
Sugar is 100% fermentable. Cider and apple juice, if they do not contain preservatives, are also just about 100% fermentable (all fructose). If you want a sweet product, you will have to backsweeten, which can only be done after the yeast has been knocked out of the end product either through chemical or heat pasteurization. I wouldn’t bother with the cheese cloth, just rack the cider out of the fermenter where the spices are into a bottling bucket.
I recall a beer someone called Grandmas Apple Pie I found this, but seems more like cider.
The one I found before used a wheat recipe, closest I found was
So I put 1 gallon of cider and 4 gallons of juice in the primary with 4 cups of sugar… cinnamon. …nutmeg… and a little brown sugar… tasted it and it was good… added the yeast and today it is already bubbling! We will see in a few weeks how it ends up. I didn’t boil anything either for this one. I figure I can get the spices out later and go from there. Thanks for the replies!
[quote=“rebuiltcellars”]
If no malt, it sounds like a pretty standard spiced hard cider, and depending on how strongly alcoholic you want it to be, there are any number of yeast strains that will work. Champagne yeast will eat through the sugar and create alcohol very effectively, leaving a dry, wine-like cider.
.[/quote]
Pretty much any yeast you use will give you a dry cider. A month ago I did a small batch of coconut cider (turned out great) with Munton’s which is known to not be a great attenuater and it took the cider from 1.060 to .997 pretty quickly.
