Apple Juice/cider option? roasting?

Hello everyone, since getting back into Home Brewing, my wife has taken no interest in the hobby at all. That was until I said that I was going to try a Cider. One of my wife's fave drinks is a Cran/Apple Cider from our local Brew Pub. My question is this. Instead of buying UV pasturized cider from one of the local Orchards or cider companies her in apple country, I am thinking of roasting whole apples until carmelized, cutting them into chunks and then running them through a food mill and Chine cap combo. Would the roasting f the apples pasturize the apples before they became juice, saving me from having to do it later? I was thinking about doing the same thing with the cranberries as well, same result?

After jucing using this process, my thought was to follow one of the cider recipes listed in the recipe database. What do you think?

I'm surprised nobody has picked this up. Having not done this or anything similar, I can't speak ex eventus, but it sounds like not only would it work but it might taste darn good. Hmmm, If only you could fry them in butter and then ferment them... But I digress.

Some of the purer mindset might say that pasteurization and cooking can drain the taste of apples; but I'm hardly pure. Here's a bump so more can chime in, and good luck!

I don't like using cooked fruit for wine, and I imagine it would be similar for a lower ABV wine, a cider.

If you think of the differences between a crisp tart raw apple, and the cooked apples in a pie, that is the "cooked fruit" flavor. I wouldn't like it, but maybe others would.

It's ok, I was going to go to the work of trying it but have noticed that most people use processed juice or cider. I think I might try a couple recipes before I go with this idea.

I had a similar idea but it was to reduce some apple juice into a light syrop and add to some more apple juice on it and ferment in hopes that some of the sugars from reducing would become unfermentable leaving some residual sweetness, and maybe an apple pie flavor, maybe add some cinnamon. Still might try this, but have to finish up some other experiments first.

I believe the other reason people generally don't use cooked apples (aside from how the flavour is changed) is that the heat would probably set the pectins in the juice causing it to stay cloudy.
Of course if that doesn't bother you, it might turn out interesting (but do not fry in butter as someone suggested, you don't want nasty rancid butter floating around after your cider has been fermenting for a few weeks).

The other thing to note is that cooking the apples will not pasteurise your final cider (it may pasteurise the starting fruit), the reason people pasteurise their cider at the end is to kill the yeast. Of course this is an entirely optional step if you're gonna ferment your cider dry first before bottling.

I thought that you wanted to pasteurize the juice or cider first so as to kill the wild yeast in the apples so that you could better predict the final ABV and finished product by using a controlled yeast strain designed for brewing?

From what I understand is that many use campden tablets to kill off the natural yeasties to give their desired yeast strain a better chance and to better predict the outcome of their brew, I know in mead making the general consensus is to not pasturise or heat the must because it can destroy the delicate flavor of the honey, so maybe the same is true of apple cider/juice. As well as the idea of setting the pectin in your brew, but that's where pectic enzyme comes into play. I think it is the majority who feel they made better cider from tart juice as applied to overly sweet juice, or from a combination of tart and sweet, so to start a cider with all sweet cooked apples you may not get an overly successful apple cider, but as far as I am concerned its always worth it to try a one gallon trial batch for experimental purposes. Happy brewing!

Ohio forgot to add, most juice or soft cider, even from the cider mills have been pasteurized to some degree, so unless you have juiced your own apples, you should be good to go.

Thanks everyone, I think I will save myself the trouble and just buy some juice.

I tried this with pears and it turned out great. I got about 40lbs of pears for free so I decided to ferment them. I froze them until I had time to process them, then thawed them in the oven at 200 degrees. The pears and the juice turned a nice golden color from cooking them. Fermented it and was a little surprised how good it tasted. It was my first batch of cider, made it up as I went, flavor from cooking was by accident, but I'm starting another batch after tasting the first. Hopefully I'll get as luck as the firs batch.

just juice 'em and go... the alcohol will kill off anything harmful- the old colonists didn't worry about pasturization and they drank gallons of the stuff- hell they even crammed a hunk of raw meat in their cider barrels!

roymullins said:

just juice 'em and go... the alcohol will kill off anything harmful- the old colonists didn't worry about pasturization and they drank gallons of the stuff- hell they even crammed a hunk of raw meat in their cider barrels!

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The problem is that the alcohol doesn't develop until much later, leaving you juice vulnerable to all kinds of wild microbes. Hell, even fermented cider has a low enough alcohol that's it's still vulnerable. While it is almost impossible to poison yourself with cider but that's a pretty low standard. Just because it's not harmful, doesn't mean it'll taste good

Those settlers didn't just juice and go, they sulfited their fermentation barrels before adding any juice and before long term storage. Despite this they still drank a lot of funky ciders most folks today wouldn't touch.

I agree with agent44, why not do a smaller test batch before committing to a whole 5 gallon effort?