We have a Belgian tripel-style ale going right now, and I've always been curious about how that would taste with apple juice. (I've already verified that it does a wonderful job with honey.)

Ingredients in this batch

  • 1 gal. Tree Top honeycrisp apple juice.
  • 1½ gal. Kroger 100% Juice unfiltered honeycrisp apple juice.
  • 13.8 oz. Kirkland wildflower honey.
  • 1 lb., 15.1 oz. ZerGüt multi-flower honey.
  • 2 lb., 12.2 oz. Smokey Mountain Honey House (Asheville, NC).
  • 44 oz. Smokey Mountain Honey House Pure Clover Honey.
  • 1 lb., 0.5 oz. Haw Creek Georgia wildflower honey, added to the carboy on 8 Aug 2020.

Prepped juice a month ahead of time: added pectic enzyme to each half-gallon bottle of apple juice, then put lid back on. Cracked lids every week or so to make sure no gasses were being generated. None were.

On 2 August, put approx. 4 oz. fermenting beer from batch 207 into one half-gallon bottle of Tree Top honeycrisp and popped in an airlock, to use as a starter.

On 6 August, sanitized equipment. Mixed honey into the apple juice one half-gallon of juice at a time by pouring some juice into the 3-gallon carboy, putting some honey into the half-gallon juice container, and shaking vigorously to mix. Pitched starter, which was fermenting vigorously yeast.

Brew date: 6 August 2020.
Original gravity: 1.200 (!! — this is the calculated as-if gravity after step-feeding addition).
Bottling date: 12 November 2020
Final gravity: 1.060.
Estimated ABV: nearly 25%!

Yield:

  • 10 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 12 x 500mL wine bottles

Total yield: Approx. 325 fl. oz., or just over two and a half gallons.

Notes and observations

  • 2020-08-06: Added just over another pound of honey to the fermenting cyser in the carboy.
  • 2020-10-26: Racked to sanitized new three-gallon carboy.
  • 2020-11-12: Bottled.