Apple Pieder - the beer that's also pie.

Hi everyone,

Here is one of our early experiments (read also Failures).

Basically it was a fantastic idea that just didn't pan out as we hoped. Like most of our other ideas for new brews we will probably try it again because, while the execution was wrong the idea is still sound.

Boden and Alex were making a cider and had the fantastic idea of putting cinnamon in the brew to make it taste like apple pie. What they didn't research first was whether or not you should put cinnamon in a beer. Turns out that you shouldn't, at least, not as much as they did.

Cinnamon is an anti-yeast agent which either kills or slows down yeast. What this meant for our brew was that it tasted great, if a little too cinnamony, but was barely alcoholic. It also didn't have any bubbles. It wasn't horrible to drink, a little weird but not horrible... until the yeast found its feet again.

What happened was that the cinnamon was in sufficient quantities in the vat to kill the yeast until there was only a very small amount of yeast left. The bi-product was a viscous brown sludge that sat on top of the cider in the vat (it was horrible by all accounts, but I will leave actual descriptions to Alex and Bobo). When we removed the cider from the vat (and the sludge) the yeast was freed from the cinnamon. It took a while but, once in the bottle with the sugar drops it began to multiply...

We almost got our first explosive bottles. Had we left them much longer they totally would have covered our living room in living cider. As it was we had already drank most of them by the weekend so that the ten that were left weren't too hard to deal with. Alex noticed a trend while he was opening them, being that they all almost took his head off when he popped the top. He quickly deduced why and opened them all, allowing them to do their thing in the sink and then he drank what was left.

What we will probably do next time (a while down the track) is put a very small amount of cinnamon in and see what happens. Hopefully a lesser amount of cinnamon will have lesser effects and therefore allow the yeast more maturation in the vat.

I will leave off here because I don't actually know exactly how many sticks of cinnamon were used, but I am sure that Bobo can add the actual ingredients list in an edit later.

Word to the wise: don't overuse spices in your beers. It can kill the yeast.. which can then come back like some sort of alcohol zombie and blow up your house.

Tastes like: pie. truthfully. A little too much cinnamon but... pie.
Better than: not much. Off apple juice? (I am sure Alex will disagree with me)
Not as good as: plain ole cider of the bought variety, the first one we made: Colonel Jesus' Fruity Temptation

edit: Fixed Tom's spelling -Boden