BACON cider

can it be done or us cooked meat in fermenting cider a horrible idea. I ate an apple bacon pizza and it was delicious. i m wondering if its possible to mesh the flavors and pull it off. any input?

You would really NOT want to do it in the fermenter. What you would want to do is an infusion of it and add it post fermentation. One way you could do it is how I make Maple Bacon Infused Bourbon in this thread.

I would use 1-2 pounds of bacon and drippings, and infuse a fifth of either a clear, neutral spirit like vodka OR a fifth of bourbon like I show, and add the bottle to the 5 gallons of cider at bottling time.

Holy crap!

ew.

Do this and post the results STAT.

I think infusing bourbon with bacon sounds awesome. It's the ratio of booze to meat candy that would be the hard part to determine. Too much bacon and you'd have to use it for cooking...too little bacon and you'd just have to drink the bourbon...wait...I don't see a downside here!

I recently did a trial with raw meat in a cider fermentation. This was based on a somewhat strange tradition based off old English and old New England farmhouse ciders. I used a very small amount and it didn't affect the cider negatively in anyway. If fully cooked and your alcohol and acid were high enough I think you could pull off bacon directly in the cider as long as you didn't do too much. Almost all wines contain a substantial amount of little bugs and animals in the fermenting wine; I think it’s all about the ratios, just try not to go too hog-wild and let us know how it tastes!!!!

Revvy said:

You would really NOT want to do it in the fermenter. What you would want to do is an infusion of it and add it post fermentation. One way you could do it is how I make Maple Bacon Infused Bourbon in this thread.

I would use 1-2 pounds of bacon and drippings, and infuse a fifth of either a clear, neutral spirit like vodka OR a fifth of bourbon like I show, and add the bottle to the 5 gallons of cider at bottling time.

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Your thread and the thought and method are outstanding ! Not only will I do a gal. test batch but I make my own sausage, jerky, smoked bacon - salmon -ect.. I can mix in with the sausage for my brats and has great possibilities in the brine process WOW I always tell my wife I want to be buried in my smoke house I might have her drop
In a gal of bacon cider. Thanks ! Off to brainstorm.

glad everyone is on the same page as me. bacon rules and cider does too. ha ha

Honestly what I would do is think outside the fermentation box a moment here. Cook the bacon in a frying pan with your cider, and serve as a pairing to the cider.

Your best bet otherwise I think is revvy's. The last thing you need is a grease layer floating on top, and it will also be a royal pain in the butt to clean that grease / fat out.

thats kind of what i was thinking. maybe serve a maple cider in a highball glass with a strip of bacon in it for looks and a tasty treat before during or after you drink. thanks for all the input guys and gals. Cheers mates

When I visited Munich, Germany a few years ago on one tour the guide told us that the Bavarian Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) came about because people were getting sick and dying due to folks brewing with meat. She specifically mentioned ham.

After seeing this thread I went back and tried to find reference to that on the internets and can't find it but it might serve as a cautionary tale.

Also our understanding of fermentation and sanitation has improved since then so maybe it's cool. Thought I'd bring it up as a cool story.

all I can think about is botulism when I read through this. Risk/reward thing I guess, perhaps bottle pasteurization could help?

Fried Bacon should be free and clear of bugs...and if you infuse it in bourbon...I seriously doubt you'll have anything that survives.

Ullapool said:

After seeing this thread I went back and tried to find reference to that on the internets and can't find it but it might serve as a cautionary tale.

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And you couldn't find anything IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE INTERNET to corroborate it, could you? Especially considering all the stuff ACTUALLY written about the purity law...I think I would take that with a huge grain of salt.

BlackGoat said:

all I can think about is botulism when I read through this. Risk/reward thing I guess, perhaps bottle pasteurization could help?

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Pickled_Pepper said:

Fried Bacon should be free and clear of bugs...and if you infuse it in bourbon...I seriously doubt you'll have anything that survives.

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Even UNFRIED bacon should be botulism free, it shouldn't have left the factory if it had traces of it. And even curing your own, you are told what to look for. But yeah, especially since you're cooking the meat first.

But geez, folks have been making and selling bacon bourbon and infusing thee own for years now...how fo you think I heard about it? From the WILD TURKEY WEBSITE, and about a hundred other places.

Remember folks, we're talking about infusing in alcohol here.....what do we suggest folks soak their wood chips in before putting it in our beers?

I actually missed the part about infusing it, I thought the bacon was just going straight in. Sounds like a fun experiment and I know little about the microbiology behind all that, my first reaction is just meat+bottling=scary. Good luck, looking forward to hearing how this comes out. Hopefully better than Rogue's voodoo crap

revvy my man. ha ha very well spoken. I'll be personally messaging you if I ever decide to do a steak infused cider

Not too helpful, but I was up at two in the morning and I watched a special on a brewery doing bacon beer. They basically fried hog loads (hehe) of bacon, put it into a big net/tea at thing, and let it sit in the brew for somewhere around two weeks, I think? The beer looked fine, no oil or grease problems. I'd shoot you a link but my memory fails me. Please, for the love of god, post results. Mmmmm

Get an unsmoked bacon slab and smoke it and rotate in apples for 10-20 min at a time in the smoker depending on how smoky you want it to be. 20 min is a pretty heavy smoke.

Well here's a thought: You may not like the taste of meat in your cider. What makes bacon special however is the hickory smoke. Get some liquid smoke and put a drop in a big glass of cider and see how it tastes. I have some hickory salt I put on my green beans to trick me into thinking it's got bacon in it.