Toffee Apple Pear Cider

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RobWalker

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This is a cider based on the Brother's Toffee Apple that I've grown to love so much.
It's especially suited to the autumn, particularly during halloween or round a bonfire, but goes well in the summer too.
You can also heat it gently on the hob to warm the cockles after a hard day in the winter. Add a little lemon, orange and ginger, and you've got a great cold cure. :)
It's easy and inexpensive to make, so give it a go!

4L 100% Organic Apple Juice
500g Honey
1 pack yeast of your choice. Popular choices are Montrachet, Champagne, Safale S-04 and Nottingham.
1 14oz tin Pear Halves
1tsp Yeast Nutrient
1 Vanilla Pod or Vanilla Extract

Approx 1.060 OG
Approx 1.010 FG

First, collect empty bottles, preferably green pints - enough for the entire batch.

Heat the honey in a relatively large saucepan, just on the edge of boiling (but not boiling) until it's dark in colour, and the smell resembles candy floss/marshmallows - around 20 mins.

Don't be afraid here - it won't burn the pan and stays very liquid, but it will froth up quite a lot.

Blend the pears using a food processer. If the pears come in flavored water or syrup, just chuck it all in, providing there's no preservatives. If they come in plain water, drain them first.

When Honey is successfully "burnt," take off the heat and allow to cool. Add 1 carton of Apple Juice and the pears, and stir thoroughly until all honey is dissolved and mixture is consistent. Blending in the Apple Juice and Pears while the honey is still hot will result in a cloudy "Scrumpy" type cider that will never settle. The choice is yours!

Add this mixture to a sterilized demi-john, top up with water or apple juice if need be, check gravity, and when cool enough add yeast and nutrient, and seal with airlock.

Add corn sugar/glucose or honey if you want it stronger. Allow to ferment completely.

When fermentation is complete, check FG. The honey is likely to have created some non-fermentables - mine finished just below 1.010.

Rack into an identical secondary vessel passing through a muslin bag. The ingredients create a lot of gunk, so doing this increases your yield.

Wrap Vanilla in a small muslin bag, and suspend in the cider using fishing line. Check taste every few days until you're happy - the cider should be close to settled by the time it has taken the taste. Alternatively, skip this stage and add vanilla extract when priming.

When taste is to your liking and cider has settled, bottle into pint bottles, adding 1/2tsp priming sugar per bottle.

Bottle condition for 3 weeks before drinking. Store in the fridge and drink cool without ice - prepare second trip to the supermarket to make more. Just don't drive, whatever you do.
 
Here's a pic of it in the demi-john, sadly I lost a bit when I filtered it, but it happened to land in a glass, just out of coincidence, so I drank it. even at this stage it's sweet, rich and delicious. I love the colour!

28769310150272665313608.jpg
 
hi im gonna give this one a try sounds really nice ive just got my packet of yeast and it comes in a bag 5g do i just chuck all this in or a set amount .
 
Welp, having left this for several months, it appears that the fg is much drier than reported. Evidentally it takes a while to eat through the burnt sugars so be patient with it! It's great though, mmm :)
 
Just burnt-up a batch of this tonight. I scaled to 3 gallons and didn't even come close to being able to fit all of that in a 3 gallon jug. 4L is more than a gallon plus the 500g of honey takes up some serious space as does a can of pears!

I also (obviously) had little confidence in the mixing of the honey and cider so I didn't even bother with an SG reading. As it is, in case of krausen (though Motrachet is usually fine with no headspace), I jammed in at about 2L under having a full 3 gallon carboy with 1500grams of honey and 2 gallons of cider and 3, ~14oz cans of pears. - I will be topping off with cider after I'm sure it won't blow the top.

Any others brew this with careful measurements? I'd love to have a more reliable OG estimate or feedback about actual volume.

All-in-all, it smelled amazing while I was 'burning' the honey and the pears tasted great!

Thanks for the recipe, I can't wait to taste!
 
Hi, I’m new here, and have been looking for a toffee apple cider recipe for ages. This one sounds great!

This will be my first attempt at brewing cider – anything that I need to be aware of, or watch out for? I’m fairly used to brewing beer, but am by no means an expert!

I was planning on up-scaling this recipe to make about 20 litres. This sounds like a really stupid question, but would I just multiply all ingredients by five – i.e. would I actually use 20 litres of AJ, as I have seen a few comments regarding the use of cider to top the “mixture” up? Also, will I really need five packets of yeast, or would one be sufficient? I normally only use one packet for 20-odd litres of beer...

Thanks
 
You just need the one packet of yeast. :)
The honey is relative to what percentage you're aiming for - you want at least some, but I reakon 1kg would probably suffice in a batch that size. There isn't really much to watch out for, just don't boil any of the fruit, make sure your equipment is sterile and realise that it will smell like farts when it's fermenting. You're probably looking at 18 litres of apple juice. Some people make cider from concentrate, but the 2 I've tried from it, I tipped away...
 
Hi again, I just have another query on this one. How much honey should I use if I want to reduce the final level of alcohol in the cider from ~11% to roughly half that amount?

Is there some kind of calculation for how much sugar produces how much alcohol?
 
Just burnt-up a batch of this tonight. I scaled to 3 gallons and didn't even come close to being able to fit all of that in a 3 gallon jug. 4L is more than a gallon plus the 500g of honey takes up some serious space as does a can of pears!

I also (obviously) had little confidence in the mixing of the honey and cider so I didn't even bother with an SG reading. As it is, in case of krausen (though Motrachet is usually fine with no headspace), I jammed in at about 2L under having a full 3 gallon carboy with 1500grams of honey and 2 gallons of cider and 3, ~14oz cans of pears. - I will be topping off with cider after I'm sure it won't blow the top.

Any others brew this with careful measurements? I'd love to have a more reliable OG estimate or feedback about actual volume.

All-in-all, it smelled amazing while I was 'burning' the honey and the pears tasted great!

Thanks for the recipe, I can't wait to taste!

Anyone?... :'(
 
I put this together two weeks ago. I wanted to make closer to 4 gallons so I took the recipe and x4 on everything but the yeast. Converted the liters to gallons and grams to ounces. I used 4 gallons of organic juice, 4 cans of pears, and about 70 ounces of honey ( it was much cheaper to buy a 100 oz jug so I estimated the pour). After the burn and cool down, I had to add about a half gallon of water to bring the Sg to 1.060. I used one pack of Nottingham and it smells like farts as in the previous posts. I will rack it into the secondary next week and post the gravity then. I am patiently eager to see this through.
 
I'm bottling this today. The gravity is just under 1.000. I wish I was able to mix the honey and cider more during brewing so that I could have a proper OG reading.

Not sure how 1.060 or 1.010 were attained. : \

Edit*

I put it into beersmith with some guesswork via the forums and logic and got this:

OG: 1.080
(for the cider I used the Fruit - Apple (sweet) selection and put in 16lbs (8 pounds per gallon according to this)
(for the pears I ended up using 1lb 15oz and entered it via the Fruit - Pear item)

Using Red Star Champagne (I'm assuming this is Montrachet) and changing the yield to 100% I got an estimated FG of .992 which is right about where I ended up.

What do y'all think?
 
Had a bash at this today; just waiting for it to start bubbling now.

I'm going to keg this, so wont be using any priming sugar. Am I going to need to back sweeten it? By the way, don't really know what back sweetening is, but have seen it mentioned in a few cider recipes. How do I do that?

Thanks :)
 
Hey all. So, I followed the recipe, caramelized my honey (smelled amazing) and blended up my pear halves. I doubled everything in the extract recipe because I'm making 2 gallons.

I took a hydrometer reading and registered a 1.074 Yikes! I added a little more apple juice and some water to 2.5 gallons before pitching my yeast. But this is going to be some strong stuff I guess?
 
I overshot the sugar quantities truth be told...but its easily fixed. 1) enjoy it strong 2) backsweeten and pasteurize or 3) add appleade in the glass for sweetness and less abv, 4) kill and keg, then force carb.

I will give this some time and fix this post later...I assure you its awfully tasty though ;)
 
Hi,

So I have now racked my brew after reaching an OG of about 1.010, and it has been sitting in the cube since the weekend.

I will be kegging this one, so won’t be using any priming sugar. What will I need to do to make this taste like the Brothers cider when serving it out of the keg, as I’m guessing that it will lack sweetness?

Thanks :)
 
Brothers is a heavily manufactured taste so its probably very hard to emulate, but this stuff tastes good in its own right. Are you sure your cider has stopped fermenting? I've recently discovered it ferments quite dry - you can stabilize and force carb and backsweeten, or add fizzy apple pop/soda in the glass :)
 
Brothers is a heavily manufactured taste so its probably very hard to emulate, but this stuff tastes good in its own right. Are you sure your cider has stopped fermenting? I've recently discovered it ferments quite dry - you can stabilize and force carb and backsweeten, or add fizzy apple pop/soda in the glass :)
Hi Rob,

Just checked it again with my hydrometer and it looks like it's still alive, so I'll continue to monitor it for the next few days.

You mentioned 'stabilize, force carb and backsweeten' - how do I do that?

Thanks
 
So I racked the cider to the secondary two weeks ago. I racked it to the keg and took my final reading: .099. It tastes okay but I clearly missed the mark with the honey boil. I should have cooked it longer. Swmbo says its pretty good but not sweet at all. I then added insult to injury and added the vanilla extract. Note to self, less is more. I am adding a half gallon of apple juice to back sweeten and reduce the vanilla kick. All in all it's pretty good but if you don't get the heated honey right, all you will have is a pretty tart cider.
 
Just finished my batch! Tweaked the recipe a bit and completely forgot to add the vanilla. The end result has a nice kick and is toasty warm.
 
So I racked the cider to the secondary two weeks ago. I racked it to the keg and took my final reading: .099. It tastes okay but I clearly missed the mark with the honey boil. I should have cooked it longer. Swmbo says its pretty good but not sweet at all. I then added insult to injury and added the vanilla extract. Note to self, less is more. I am adding a half gallon of apple juice to back sweeten and reduce the vanilla kick. All in all it's pretty good but if you don't get the heated honey right, all you will have is a pretty tart cider.

This is totally my experience too! I got a .098 reading- it will probably finish at .099 The stuff is really strong. I'm not sure what to do with this stuff. Maybe add in a tablet to kill off any remaining yeast, and then back sweeten with apple juice? That will make it difficult to gauge as far as bottle-carbing goes. I don't know.
 
Sounds like it. I kegged the stuff and added 1/2 gallon of apple juice. The fridge temp should keep any yeast at bay.
 
this is the second recipe i've seen today that calls for heating / burning honey . . . I make mead and never use heat, none at all. All my mead buddies say that heating honey kills a ton of flavor . . . thoughts?
 
The last post brings up a good point. I'd like to try this by heating done brown sugar for the caramelized toffee flavor and adding some honey when it cools to really make out flavorful.
 
May have to try this for my first cider. Never drank one in my life. Why not make one
 
I just started some of this, and I must say I am excited. I added a touch of maple syrup and brown sugar (1cup of both) but Im not really sure if the syrup will shine through. SWMBO was eating waffles, and it seemed like a natural fit.

I havent really worked with honey before, so this is my question, after burning the honey and it cools, should a majority of it go from the frothy state back down, or are we aiming for all of it in the frothy state? What I ended up doing was burning the honey several times, skimming the golden frothy part off and adding it. It seemed to retain much of the burned honey smell, which I really hope shines through.

Oh, and mine took off quite fast, I actually had to use a blow off tube for the first time. I hydrated my yeast (Nottingham) about 6pm, pitched it with a tablespoon of yeast nutrient and a table spoon of energizer into two gallons of juice and the pear, put an airlock on it while I did the honey, added the honey about 945pm and went to bed. About 2am I hear the dogs getting into something, and go out to find them licking the carboy with it feverishly forcing its way out of the airlock. I have NEVER had one of my ciders take off that quickly, much less require a blow off tube.

All in all, I think this is going to be a regular thing, even if it is just an excuse to burn honey. Dear god that smelled delicious!
 
Just made this last night and added more pears to the recipe. Big mistake that was, come back a few ours later and the pear was coming out the top. My question is at the beggining of fermintation it looks like the pear pulp rises to the top, does this happen with everyone elses and will it eventually settle back down or should I stir it a bit.

Cheers
 
Wow, sounds great. Just went to the grocery store and got all the ingredients.

Here is my question to anybody who has done this...how much vanilla does it take per gallon?
 
Just curious as to the amount of vanilla that should be used if going with the extract method. Has anyone used it with the recipe? I will be ready to bottle this weekend and need to know soonish.
 
I have had good luck adding the burnt/reduced honey once the primary settles down. That gets the yeast going again. Of course, it makes it harder to figure out the "equivelant" OG. But I've had great results and SWMBO and friends love it. I have not tried adding vanilla but will do so soon.
 
Just got the things i needed for a 1 gallon batch. I am excited to try this one! thank you for sharing! :D

Has anyone tried different honeys??? i got 500g of Wildflower honey... was thinking about putting different batches on, if this one turns out good.
 
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