Cloning in progress (Strongbow?!)

Disclaimer: I haven't had a strongbow since like July.. but please, read on.

So I'm making Graham's English Cider. Starting gravity 1.050. I used Mott's apple juice and a regular lime as opposed to three key limes.

A month to the day after pitch I pop open my primary and am amazed at how fast it cleared. But then, store-bought juices are really well filtered, aren't they? I didn't get a gravity on it but I did taste it (and lordamighty was it dry.) Racked almost exactly 5g to secondary and topped off with ~1g of juice (same kind). After topping, the gravity was 1.020. So I tasted it again.

To my palate, at that stage in fermentation (that's 5g + 3 cups, fermented dry, racked and topped off) it tasted almost exactly like I recall Strongbow tasting.

I'm going to let this go dry, because I really do wonder what the Graham's tastes like, but for the price of 6g of apple juice I'm definitely going to have to make this again and try to stop it at semisweet stage.

If anyone's bored enough to try, please do make this and report your results! Also, thoughts on carbing while stopping at the right point (bottle pasteurizing, likely enough) are welcome.

I've got something like this planned. I have a bottle of Strongbow that I'm going to get a FG measurement on and a carbonation judgement. Plan is to ferment it under pressure for natural carbonation till it reaches close to the same FG as Strongbow, cold crash, bottle & pasteurize. At least that's the way I've got it working in my head.

Of course I"m just preaching to the choir when I tell you to get your carb judgement first and then let it go flat before you get a gravity on it... right? right

I'd be interested to hear the FG of a flat strongbow. I feel like that would get us so much closer (FG + abv = approximately how much sweet to start with)

Shoot, somebody oughta test the PH on it too while we're being sciency.

Tw0fish said:

Of course I"m just preaching to the choir when I tell you to get your carb judgement first and then let it go flat before you get a gravity on it... right? right

I'd be interested to hear the FG of a flat strongbow. I feel like that would get us so much closer (FG + abv = approximately how much sweet to start with)

Shoot, somebody oughta test the PH on it too while we're being sciency.

Click to expand...

I have pH strips so I can do that as well. I have a refractometer too. Should only take about half a bottle for a gravity reading. It's on the too do list in the next couple of weekends.

2 years later...did anyone do this??!

lol