06.13.11 Cider tasting

I brought the remaining cider I had to a friend's place for a party at the beginning of the month and got a some feedback on them.

Concentrate Cider

Out of the two ciders there was less of this cider left at the end of the night. I'm not sure if it was just because people were turned off by a dry cider or because they wanted to try something different. (It has been explained to me that most commercial ciders in the area are pretty dry.)

It was described as having more taste then the Turbinado cider, which would make sense considering the can of concentrate that was used to back sweeten and carb it. When I had some it still seemed to be a little bit sour to me. And I believe that if I could reduce the sourness a little it would make for a more refreshing drink and something you could have more then one or two of at a time.

Turbinado Cider

This one had a muted apple taste to is and since it was lacking the concentrate turned out to be smoother. Although the dryness gave it an edge of its own. And from what I remember it seemed to be a little more winey then the other, I've heard that this has something to do with boosting the ABV with the turbinado sugar.

That's all I can remember about this one, not many people tried it so I wasn't able to get many opinions other then it was better then the concentrate cider. I'm thinking that it might be worth trying to either back sweeten it a lot with turbinado sugar or try priming with a little bit of concentrate.

Over all I think that both of these need more work. I want to either let them sit longer before bottling, or try a different yeast strain. From what I understand people have had some good results using ale yeasts. If I can find an easy source of them in town I'll give them a go next time instead of the wine yeast.

04.02.2011 Concentrate Cider again

Back in April I started a second batch of the Concentrate Cider that I made in Feburary. This time I decided to not rush it and waited and additional week before bottling it. I figured that the extra week would allow more time for the yeast to fall out as well as clean up after itself. Once bottled I left them for 13 days (compared to 3 last time) before tossing them into the fridge. The caps had started to raise a little and looking back at the ginger beer it meant that they needed to go into the fridge right otherwise they could have become bottle bombs.

In addition to letting the cider sit in primary longer I also used a different yeast, Lalvin 71B. I had heard that it was good at malic fermentation and hoped that it would help with the sour taste that the last one had. It's still to early to tell as that I only had a little bit, I cracked a couple and shared them with some friends and they seemed to like it. It still seemed a little sour to me, but not as much as the first few from the last batch. With any luck when I crack the next one it will have mellowed out some more. Also it was mega carbed, the first sip that I had was all carb and bubbles. Which is a neat experience considering that cider doesn't really have any sort of head retention. I probably left them out too long to carb, but as long as they don't explode I don't mind. I'm holding onto them until the start of June when I'll be getting some friends to help me finish them.

Something that I found interesting was that even with the extra week the cider only fermented down to a FG of 1.000. I'm guessing that the concentrate is providing some sugars that are harder for the yeast to eat and end up being left behind. I also took a gravity reading of the cider after priming, it came out to be around 1.010. I believe that this is at the upper end of the dry range and would be considered a semi-sweet cider. Which, depending on what you like, could be better then the dryer commercial ciders.

02/13/2011 Concentrate Cider

Back in February I decided to give a quick an easy apple cider a try. I had been lurking around the Cider forum and had come up with a recipe based on others that I had read.

4.2L Allen's apple juice
1 can no name frozen Apple Juice Concentrate with ascorbic acid (Vitamin C)
and another can of concentrate for priming
1 packet Danstar Nottingham yeast

There's nothing to this recipe, just mix the concentrate with the juice, shake and pitch the yeast. At least that is what I thought... I realized that as I was making it that you need to melt down the concentrate before mixing and allow it to come to room temperature before pitching the yeast. Otherwise it could be too cold for the yeast and there could be a rather significant lag time before they get started.

I pitched the yeast on a Sunday and by the Tuesday the yeast still fermentation hadn't started. The closest that the jug was sitting in was 20C, and was well within the temperature tolerance (14 – 21C) of the yeast. I ended up moving it into the furnace room, which was around 25C, to see if I couldn't kick start the yeast into action. And it pretty much took off, I had considered moving it back into the closet to prevent the yeast from throwing off flavors at such a high temp. But after the trouble it had before I decided that it was better to leave it in the furnace room rather then risk stalling the fermentation again.

13 days later I primed the cider by racking it onto another can of melted concentrate and then bottled it. At the time the cider was still fairly cloudy, with lots of yeast still in suspension. But since this was supposed to be a quick cider I bottled it anyways and made sure to keep a close eye on it. I left the lids loose for 24hrs to push out any oxygen and then sealed them. After about 3 days the bottles felt like they had carbed enough and since it happened to fast I tossed them into the fridge in order to avoid bottle bombs. As it was they could have been carbed more and would have benefited from being left out longer.

On to the tasting notes, it ended up being fairly sour with a weak carb that all but disappeared by the half way mark. And I found that as it warmed up in the glass it started to get a bit of a cloying mouth feel. This could be attributed to the lack of carbonation, I've read that the CO2 adds an acidic taste that can offset sweetness. So that as it disappeared there wasn't anything to counter all the extra sugars that I added at bottling. Overtime though it started to get less sour, one suggestion when I asked on the forums was that the cider underwent a malolactic fermentation while within the bottles. And the OG was 1.050 and the FG was 1.000 making for an ABV of 6.55%.

The next time I tired this I left it in primary a lot longer in hopes that it would produce a cleaner tasting product. It is currently bottle conditioning and I'll have post on it within the next few weeks.