LeBreton

Recipes 

On a whim the other week I bought a medium toast oak spiral stick and added it to a batch to try and give it a little more body. After leaving it for 10 days there is more oak then I wanted for what has turned out to be a rather light cider and is giving it a noticeable unbalanced bitter-ish profile. I was thinking of trying to rescue this batch with a juice infusion to backsweeten before bottling and give it a more full taste.

Cherry, plum, and cranberry are all popular choices for adding to cider. Which do you think would best complement an oaky taste?

__________________
Bellwether Hard Cider
In all the states no door stands wider,
To ask you in to drink hard cider

Yooper

Recipes 

Oak ages out pretty quickly- I'd try that before adding anything else. You may find yourself adding the oak, then some cherry. But then it's too astringent, so you may want to add honey, and so on. I'd age it for two months, then try it again and see if I still wanted to "fix" it.

__________________
Broken Leg Brewery
Giving beer a leg to stand on since 2006

DMartin

Recipes 

I've never added fruit to oaked cider, but I have a strange line of thought...

Two popular flavors for bourbon are cherry and honey. Bourbon is heavily oaked so perhaps cherry and honey are two good ideas?

EDIT: haha I suggested the same thing as Yooper! I feel like I just passed a test of some kind.

LeBreton

Recipes 

Update:

Cider is now finished. Yooper was correct, the oak aged out quite rapidly. Three weeks ago when I started this thread it was what I would call 'very bitter'. Had a bottle two days ago and the bitter oak is 95% gone.

__________________
Bellwether Hard Cider
In all the states no door stands wider,
To ask you in to drink hard cider