aging bottled cider?

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SerTimtheJailer

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So I bought a case of angry orchard hard apple cider. If I were to put it in a oak barrel would it actually age right and taste good afterwards or will I just be wasting my time. I'd try to make my own hard cider but its not possible at the moment.
 
I doubt you would be happy with the result. You'd certainly loose the carbonation and probably oxidize the cider in the process. Angry Orchard is also kind of the Bud Lite of the cider world, it isn't exactly a high quality ingredient to start with.

You don't need an orchard, a press, and lots of shiny stainless steel to make cider at home. Free food grade buckets from a bakery, sanitizing solution (I really like StarSan but there are plenty of alternatives), an auto-siphon, a hydrometer, and an airlock are all you really need to be making cider from preservative free grocery store juice. You can easily get by with less but what I suggested is probably less expensive than an oak cask. If oak flavors are important to you oak chips, oak cubes, oak honeycomb, and whole barrel staves are all available but I'd suggest long term aging in a PET plastic or glass carboy.
 
What is it you're trying to accomplish? You don't need to oak age something to age it. You can just let it age in the bottle.
Though I'm not sure what good it would do for angry orchard. Oak aging may be good, I couldn't
say. Unless someone on here has done it, i say give it a try and see what happens. Just be careful of oxidation and be sure to purge the oak vessel with c02
 
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