Before I get into the taste results, let's take a walk down the memory lane with this brew. First off, I ended up using the Wyeast London ESB yeast for this beer. Mistake #1 was this choice. This is a high flocculating yeast that will get lazy and drop out quickly if the temp gets lower than it wants. Now, this would normally not be an issue, had I realized this and made prior plans. I do not have a sure-fire setup for temp control, I usually just set our house thermostat to 70 and leave it be. Low and behold my wonderful but sometime oblivious to my fermentation temp needs fiancee would keep turning the thermostat down to 65 while we were not there. About 8 days into fermentation, it stalled at 1.052(OG was 1.074). I ended up making up a starter with wlp001 and pitching that two days later. At the same time, I cut up about 12-13 granny smith apples that I sprinkled some cinnamon/sugar/nutmeg on and added that into the fermenter along with a 12oz can of frozen apple concentrate. I let that go for about a week, and it finally stopped at 1.038 and wouldn't go any further. I decided to bottle it up at this point.
As of last night they have been conditioning for almost 2 weeks now so I figured it was time to pop open a bottle while some friends were over. I wasn't overly sure about how this would come out with such a high FG but was pleasantly surprised. First thing I noticed was the apple/cinnamon aroma. Not overwhelming but you could definitely tell it was there. Taste was upfront apple then the spices kicked in. Very creamy body with a decently amount of dark brown/tan head.
Overall this might be a beer I need to make again as it really turned out well, but I am unsure of the results if I actually get full attenuation out of it. I did end up sending a couple bottles home with people so I think I shall label this experiment a success for now.
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