Still burning, cider?

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Highbeam

Highbeam

Minister of Fire
Dec 28, 2006
20,909
Mt. Rainier Foothills, WA
It’s raining and 55 out so I decided to start a fire in the shop. Definitely one of the last for 2018/2019. We’re also burning in the house but still have a few weeks left of burning in there.

To feel tropical I made up a 5 gallon batch of raspberry guava hard cider. This stuff is about 8% abv. Lots of pulp in guava juice but it has a nice flavor.
 

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Very nice. Were you wearing a Hawaiian shirt & listening to Jimmy Buffett?
[emoji6][emoji3][emoji3][emoji6]

Sent from my VS835 using Tapatalk
 
I like raspberry/apple cider. Cherry/apple is good too. Nice to see some rain finally.
 
begreen said:
I like raspberry/apple cider. Cherry/apple is good too. Nice to see some rain finally.
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Raspberry is a very good, identifiable, and strong flavor and pretty available. I don’t see much cherry concentrate but if I do I’ll grab some. That sounds delicious. Hard cider is really easy to make and gluten free!
 
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begreen said:
I made my cherry cider with the 'raisins" I had left over from making cherry liqueur and put them in the first ferment. You could try these out.
https://nuts.com/driedfruit/cherries/sour-tart.html
or these. I'd use about 2# to a 5-6gallon batch.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000H7LVKY/?tag=hearthamazon-20
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As much as I prefer more natural ways to get those flavors I haven’t had much luck using actual fruit. Instead, after fermenting the cider dry, I’ve been adding the frozen concentrates that are meant for making pitchers of juice. A little sweetness and a lot of flavor.
 
I had great success with the fruit. I have used our cherries and raspberries. What failed for you?
 
begreen said:
I had great success with the fruit. I have used our cherries and raspberries. What failed for you?
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The flavor and sweetness is lost in the ferment. I juiced over 5# of blueberries and they just don’t have much flavor, the sugar is burned up by the yeast so no real effect. I even made a blackberry wheat beer once with like 7# of berries. Just meh.

I sure like the sound of cherry cider though.
 
Well, the cherry flavor was definitely present, but I make a dry cider that is carbonated like champagne. One could kill the yeast after ferment and then sweeten to taste, but it would need to be gas carbonated then.
 
Highbeam said:
The flavor and sweetness is lost in the ferment. I juiced over 5# of blueberries and they just don’t have much flavor, the sugar is burned up by the yeast so no real effect. I even made a blackberry wheat beer once with like 7# of berries. Just meh.

I sure like the sound of cherry cider though.
Click to expand...

You likely used the wrong kind of blueberries. ==c
 
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I might have just dumb lucked into arriving at a successful product. I've only done it a couple times with fruit in addition to the apple cider. Both times came out very nicely.
 
begreen said:
Well, the cherry flavor was definitely present, but I make a dry cider that is carbonated like champagne. One could kill the yeast after ferment and then sweeten to taste, but it would need to be gas carbonated then.
Click to expand...

We ferment to dry (30 days at least), kill yeast with sorbate, backsweeten and flavor, then keg and gas carbonate. I also like a high carbonation level. Our cider is much drier and about 50% higher abv than most commercial ciders.

I probably did use the wrong kind of blueberries! I checked records and it was 1.5 gallons that i juiced. Lots of color but no blueberry flavor which really shouldn’t be a surprise since blueberries don’t really have a lot of flavor.

Maybe strawberry rhubarb would be a good experiment.
 
Highbeam said:
We ferment to dry (30 days at least), kill yeast with sorbate, backsweeten and flavor, then keg and gas carbonate. I also like a high carbonation level. Our cider is much drier and about 50% higher abv than most commercial ciders.

I probably did use the wrong kind of blueberries! I checked records and it was 1.5 gallons that i juiced. Lots of color but no blueberry flavor which really shouldn’t be a surprise since blueberries don’t really have a lot of flavor.

Maybe strawberry rhubarb would be a good experiment.
Click to expand...

The right ones have flavor. Next time try to find some wild ones a.k.a. low bush. (Might be a hard find where you're at). Those cultivated high bush ones can be called blue but that's about it.
 
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Highbeam said:
We ferment to dry (30 days at least), kill yeast with sorbate, backsweeten and flavor, then keg and gas carbonate. I also like a high carbonation level. Our cider is much drier and about 50% higher abv than most commercial ciders.

I probably did use the wrong kind of blueberries! I checked records and it was 1.5 gallons that i juiced. Lots of color but no blueberry flavor which really shouldn’t be a surprise since blueberries don’t really have a lot of flavor.

Maybe strawberry rhubarb would be a good experiment.
Click to expand...
I left the raspberries in the first ferment for a couple weeks before racking to secondary. Same with the cherries. A lot of flavor and color is in the skins.
 
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maple1 said:
The right ones have flavor. Next time try to find some wild ones a.k.a. low bush. (Might be a hard find where you're at). Those cultivated high bush ones can be called blue but that's about it.
Click to expand...

High bush blueberries: Big, but not very flavorful.

Wild blueberries: Small, but bursting in flavor.

I'll take wild blueberries in my pie, cobbler, coffee cake, etc. every time.
 
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