Apfelbier, because pumpkin spice is so last year.

This is the last time this beer would be this clear (Racking from kettle to carboy)

As we in the northern hemisphere face the dark winter, a yearning for solace from the cold fills our hearts. While typically I have made a pumpkin spice beer each year around this time I decided this year that I was sick of pumpkin spice and wanted to do something a bit different.

I have done beers aged on apples and crabapples before, but those were always raw apples. This time, I got the idea of a sort of apple pie beer with cooked apples. I had an idea of the flavor of cooked spiced apples in my head. I took about 10# of different apples (Gala and ambrosia) and blended them as I cooked them into an apple sauce. 

Following this, I added the apple sauce into a carboy.

Here's where I had a dilemma: I had recently decided to make a bunch of lagers, so this beer was made with bohemian lager yeast from Wyeast. Because I was adding it back onto the apples after primary was complete, I was thinking that a second fermentation could make byproducts that I didn't want in my lager. After racking the beer onto the apples, I fermented it cold at 51*C and then did a second diacetyl rest. Despite being lagered for almost 3 weeks (fast lager method) and receiving two separate doses of gelatin finings, the beer was super hazy from the pectin which came from cooking the apples. I hadn't taken the initiative to add pectinase, and didn't think the enzyme would work very well at lagering temperatures anyways.

Before bottling, I made a tea of cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom, ginger and black peppercorns, and added this to the beer.

After racking the beer into the bottling bucket, a very thick cake of applesauce remained along with some very hazy beer.

Recipe:

OG: 1.050 IBU: 17 4 SRM

5# 2-row malt
2# Wheat malt
2# Rye malt
0.25# Honey malt

1,5oz Hallertauer (60 mins)

2 cinnamon sticks
6 cloves
6 green cardamom pods
1 tsp ginger
3 crushed black peppercorns