Hops in my cider

Crazy idea--combining my love for hoppy beer with cider love--anyone tried it? If so, reccommend any hops? Anything I should be careful about? Thanks

Talcottsk said:

Crazy idea--combining my love for hoppy beer with cider love--anyone tried it? If so, reccommend any hops? Anything I should be careful about? Thanks

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In the UK if you mix half a pint of lager/pale ale and hard cider together it's called a 'Snakebite'. It goes slightly cloudy and has a fairly strange taste really. Not one i'd recommend. Maybe try that first to see if you like it before committing to a full batch!

If you are looking for hop flavor and/or aroma, try dry hopping bottles of cider with a flower or two. I'd try the spicy/fruity hops like Goldings and Fuggles. You could try a little hop tea in a glass of cider for bittering. Haven't run across the idea before, but adding a spicy note sounds appealing. Maybe I'll try some today.

Caplan said:

In the UK if you mix half a pint of lager/pale ale and hard cider together it's called a 'Snakebite'. It goes slightly cloudy and has a fairly strange taste really. Not one i'd recommend. Maybe try that first to see if you like it before committing to a full batch!

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Or a Crown FLoat: Cider topped with cider. The guiness is poured in such a way that it floats. It is NOT supposed to be mixed evenly. (Or is it, cider floats on guiness..can't remember) It's quite tasty really. Taste wierd if they mispour and everything gets mixed.

I've gone to 10 bars and goten 6 diff names for the above. Same with the lager or ale/ guiness drink and I've heard "snakebite" used for the guiness/cider drink, though I think it is suposed to be a pale ale and cider.

EDIT: Here's a list:

Black & Tan: The original a classic layering of Bass Ale and Guinness Stout.

Crown Float: Cider with Guinness topped off as a crown.

CzechMate: Guinness Stout layered 50/50 with Pilsner Urquell.

Guinness Shandy: Guinness Stout layered 50/50 with Lemonade.

Guinness Snakebite: Guinness Stout layered 50/50 with Cider.

Half `n Half: A layering of Harp Lager and Guinness Stout.

Harp Snakebite: Harp Lager layered 50/50 with Cider.

Black Velvet: Guinness mixed 50/50 with champagne.


Black Ice : A layering of Guinness and Smirnoff Ice. (must be a new one and pretty cheesey and enough to make a beer drinker cry!)

I think I'm going to try my overly dry cider with my barley wine. The barley wine started off tasting great but after a 2.5 months it has an odd smel and isn't very sweet any more. Though I'm going to see what it is like in a few more months.
(I used an odd specialty ingredient that may just need time to mellow and is more noticeable now that the yeast has lowered the FG over time)

david_42 said:

If you are looking for hop flavor and/or aroma, You could try a little hop tea in a glass of cider for bittering. Haven't run across the idea before, but adding a spicy note sounds appealing. Maybe I'll try some today.

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Talcottsk, i'd try this one by david_42 rather than mine or Denny's Brew 'cocktails' for a true test. If either yourself or david_42 try it i'd be interested in your findings!

Denny's Brew said:

I used an odd specialty ingredient that may just need time to mellow and is more noticeable now that the yeast has lowered the FG over time

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Off topic i know but what did you use?

Caplan said:

Off topic i know but what did you use?

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Yerba mate as the primary bittering ingredient. I think I used to much. It tasted good the first month.
Could be some oxidation, but I don't think so.

It certainly is an odd specialty ingredient in barley wine! No idea how that would mature.

I have some more hop questions--if I just dry hop this my beer expert (brother) told me I will only add the fragrance and no flavor of hops--is it crazy to boil my cider in order to add hop flavor?

And...how much should I add per gallon, I know about 1 to 2 oz per gallon of BEER but this is cider and I don't want to drown the flavor just add to it with a bit o' bitter --any guesses you may have would be greatly appreciated--i know probably noone has tried this :

Talcottsk said:

I have some more hop questions--if I just dry hop this my beer expert (brother) told me I will only add the fragrance and no flavor of hops--is it crazy to boil my cider in order to add hop flavor?

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I don't think it's necessary to boil the whole batch. Just take out a little and boil/steep/deep fry your hops in that, then let it cool down and put it back with the rest of the cider.

I like the idea of hopped cider. Keep us posted on the progress!

Thats a great idea--I'll have to try that one out--I'll keep you posted, but this is #2 on my schedule for ciders, so it might be some time before I can taste it--i hope i will be happy at that time....who knows

If I boil and and add it when bottling would that do crazy things? I'm thinking of testing 3 different types of hops in 1 batch by adding during bottling...crazy?

Talcottsk said:

Thats a great idea--I'll have to try that one out--I'll keep you posted, but this is #2 on my schedule for ciders, so it might be some time before I can taste it--i hope i will be happy at that time....who knows

If I boil and and add it when bottling would that do crazy things? I'm thinking of testing 3 different types of hops in 1 batch by adding during bottling...crazy?

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If you boil the hops in water, cool then add it (maybe use that hop tea to dissolve any priming sugar for carbonation?) it'll give you a good idea on which hops work best and the amount of boil time to extract the right levels of bittering/aroma. Let us know what you do!

Did you ever make cier with hops? How did it turn out?

Very interested myself, I'm looking for more of an apfelbier than apfelwein. Any info?

Any progress? We have made some nice ciders and are thinking about doing this.

The hop tea idea sounds good. I think I need to read about that again. I remember a guy on here talking about having to change the pH before he put in wort

To me a dry cider and bitter hops/ grapefruit sounds bad. So I'll have to choose the right hops pairing.

I was never a fN of our cider aroma. A crazy hop aroma mixed with a tad apple aroma sounds like a good sniff. Haha. I'll keep you posted.

If the cider place didn't close yet, well make some next week when I get back in town

I added 2 oz. of cascade hops to a 6 gallon carboy during primary fermentation. I found that it imparted and interesting citrusy quality to the finished product. I added a dosage after secondary fermentation that brought the residual sugars up to about 2%. Overall it was slightly sweet with a hint of citrus and burps definitely had had a hoppy hint to it.

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but came across the thread while doing a little research on my next experiment: I'm planning on trying two things in my next cider:

1. Rather than fermenting with champagne yeast, I'm going to try a hefeweizen yeast (specifically, the Safale WB-06.)

2. I'm going to dry hop with 2 oz of Cascade.

Also found in my research was this article:

https://byo.com/stories/issue/item/2861-hopped-cider

It actually addresses a lot of the questions I found in this thread (for example, if you want the bitterness, you need to heat--*not* boil--some of the cider, add the hops, and then add it back into the fermenter.) I'll let you know how it comes out!

Hey guys, I brew this all the time. It’s one of my favorite summertime brews, and a big hit with all my cider drinking friends.

I generally make one gallon batches, but you should be able to scale it up if need be.
First take a half a liter of apple juice and bring it to a boil. Then add 8-10 pellets of hops (not sure what that is in ounces) and let it boil for half an hour.
In the last two minutes of the boil add another 2-4 pellets of hops
Strain out as much of the hops as you can, unless you’ve used a hops bag, in which case this point is moot.
Add your hopped AJ to your carboy and top up the remaining space with apple juice (3.5 liters)
Add your pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, and yeast.
Wait

Side note: To date I have used Centennial hops (AKA super cascade) exclusively, with excellent results
Side note: If you are using concentrated apple juice you can make a hops tea and add it to your concentrate, but I wouldn’t dilute straight apple juice.

Some people are going to whine about how boiling the apple juice causes the pectins to set and cause the cider to become cloudy. I have made about nine batches of this cider and cloudiness has never been a problem. The only noticeable difference in the appearance is the color, as it has a deeper gold color than straight ciders.

Cheers

Javalin -

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to be doing two 5 gallon batches at the same time; 1 with no hops, just a straight up cider with a honey kick; 1 that's hopped. My original plan was to simply dry hop in the last three days before crashing and kegging, primarily for a blast of aroma and a touch of flavor. But your suggestion intrigues me, does doing a boil primary to the fermentation with the hops give more bitterness, flavor, or aroma?

Thanks!

Dave

I can't say that I've tried dry hopping my cider. From what I've read it seems that dry hopping as you've described will provide more aroma, but less bitterness and flavor. I find that the method I use provides a good amount of flavor without overpowering the cider, and a slight bite at the end. More aroma could be achieved by adding more hops at the end of the boil than I described.

If you want more bite a longer boil should take more bittering out of the hops. I'm brewing an IPA version of this recipe where I basically just took a handful of hops pellets and threw them in the AJ for the boil. We'll see how it turns out.