A recipe idea for making a spiced hard apple cider.
So…… I had this keg of cider that had been aging at the back of the brew-room for about 18 months…… it was time to bottle it, but what sort of cider should it be? After all, we have bottles of dry cider, sweet cider with sugar, sweet cider with fructose, dry hopped cider, dry ‘hopped’ with fir tips cider, oak aged cider…..
We needed a new idea. “What about a spiced cider” says Mrs Brew and Build. “Great idea” I say. We can use some Belgian candi sugar and cinnamon, and try to get a spiced, sweet caramel cider. Let’s do it !
The cider is already in the unitank chilling at 3 degrees c, so lets get the spiced side of things done. First we need to measure out 29 grams of sugar per litre of cider. The sugar we’re using is our homemade Belgian Candi Sugar that you can make yourself. This sugar is full of caramel, toffee, chocolate and roasted flavours.
To melt the sugar down, we’ll add some water. I’ve got about 400 grams of sugar, so I’ll add about 500ml of water.
Turning the heat up, we’ll get that all dissolved and up to a boil.
Whilst that’s heating up, we can measure out 1.5 grams of cinnamon per litre of cider. I’m using cinnamon bark strips.
With the cinnamon in, we’ll leave it to simmer for about 10 minutes.
After ten minutes, take the syrup off the heat, and place in a water bath to cool down.
Stabilise the cider for back-sweetening
Before we put any fermentable sugar into a cider with live yeast still present, we need to stabilise the cider. For more on this, have a look at the Making Cider article.
Here I’m adding Campden tablets (1 per 3.5 litres), and Potassium Sorbate (1/2 teaspoon per 3.5 litres). I’m going to add the stabilisers at the same time as the sugar, simply because I’ve stripped so much yeast out of the cider, and it’s sitting at such a cold temperature, that it’s not likely to start fermenting before the stabilisers take effect.
Once the syrup is luke warm, we’ll sieve the syrup onto the stabilisers, and mix to dissolve them.
Once mixed, I’ve poured it back into the pot to make pouring into the tank a little easier…..
As with most alcohol production, keeping air out is a very important aspect. So, I’ve got a positive flow of CO2 coming out through the top of the tank before I take off the lid and start to pour.
Clearing the cider with gelatin
Now with the temperature set at 3 degrees c, I’ll fine with gelatin.
As you can see below, the fall out fills the site glass, and after 24 hours, the cider is clear.
Carbonating and bottling
With the temperature already at 3 degrees c, it’s a simple matter of bringing the pressure up to 14 psi with the carb stone, which gives a CO2 volume of 2.8, and a volume of around 2.4 after bottling.
And finally….
The taste
Possibly the most important part…. how does it taste?
Well, on opening, it has a nice fizz. The carbonation level is good, and gives a nice sparkle to the cider. the bubbles disperse the aroma of cinnamon and caramel as well. Apple is quite prominent in the aroma also, which all together gives the spiced cider the smell of apple strudel. Very promising.
The taste follows a similar path, first comes the apple. A cool fermentation of the cider has really kept the fresh apple taste. Then comes cinnamon, quickly followed by the dark sugar/caramel. Much like the smell, it also tastes very much like we’ve squeezed an apple strudel into the glass. It’s delicious. This is going to be a winner, whether it’s sipping in front of a fire in winter, or drunk super cold in the sun on the hottest summer day.
I think this could be a regular cider version at the farm for years to come.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, and I really hope you have a shot at a similar version yourself. If you’d like to see the full video, check out our YouTube page here.