is it possible to make this cherry cider?

I have found the best cherry juice ever near Estes Park Colorado.

On our way back home from a mini-vacation to Estes Park we found a little tiny store that specialized in Black Bing Cherry Cider (non-alcoholic). We went ahead and picked up a bottle of Cherry Cider and Cherry Juice. Both of them were EXCELLENT! (and have no preservatives luckly)

I have never made a cider before, but would it be possible to ferment this black bing cherry juice into a hard black bing cherry cider? What steps would I take in order to do this? I don't know much about making ciders and I can't find very much information on cherry ciders which has me thinking that there might be something i'm missing (the cherry ciders I have found are mostly non-alcoholic and usually contain almost all apple cider with cherry geletin) I am hoping to make a cider with this AMAZING juice, and still retain a good strong black bing cherry flavor. Can someone out there lend me a hand?

Thanks!

Bings are sweet cherries, so when you ferment them, you end up with a very different, dry cider. What you could try is to reserve about 20% of the juice, ferment the rest with an equal amount of apple juice. Then use campden tables to kill the yeast and add the reserved juice.

What kind of sugar should I use to bump up the alcohol content, but not add much in the way of flavor? corn sugar?

Okay, here's the plan...

1/2 black bing cherry juice
1/2 apple juice
? cups corn sugar to bump alcohol (undetermined)

Ferment

Then like you said i'll add campden tablets to kill the yeast

then add 20-30% more black bing juice.


The only thing is... will this drink have to be non-carbonated? Since I kill the yeast, then I will not be able to prime and carbonate, but if I add more yeast then it will end up fermenting the juice that I didn't want fermented. Maybe I add concentrated juice and then a bit of carbonated water in each bottle or something? Is there anything low-tech that I can do (ie I don't have the equipment to artificially carbonate)

i just drove to estes this weekend and saw the same store with the same juice. coming into the fall i figured a hard cherry cider would please the wives and get my buddies and i more brewing time.

since bing cherry juice is really sweet, i don't think you'll need additional sugar in primary - but I'm going to experiment tomorrow. going to use a CA Ale use that will ferment pretty dry while reserving about 20% of my juice volume to adjust taste. I'm going to go 100% cherry juice - no apple. just an experiment so see how/if cherry tanins will affect things.

if you come back to this post, let me know how your cider came out or if you picked up any tips.

Just be careful... Think Cherry Cough Syrup (Robitussin) Flavor wine.....
There is probably some more info on this in the Wine forum for making a cherry wine that comes out tasting like Cherries and not like Medicine.......

truckjohn said:

Just be careful... Think Cherry Cough Syrup (Robitussin) Flavor wine.....
There is probably some more info on this in the Wine forum for making a cherry wine that comes out tasting like Cherries and not like Medicine.......

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THAT SOUNDS AMAZING. I LOVE that flavour!

But alas, I've never even seen a cherry juice, even in the supermarket

I'd ferment and either cold crash or leave some juice left over to back sweeten with.

I just had cider made with cherry juice.. they added it at bottling, because during fermentation the cherry flavor/smell would most likely ferment out. They added Potasium Sorbate also so re-fermentation didn't begin. Anyhow, it tasted fantastic. I'd avoid fermenting the cherry juice and ad after fermentation. My two cents..

bdgrizzle let me know how it comes out I have been looking to see If i can make this too. cherry juice cider....no apple juice pure cherry right?

boss429 said:

bdgrizzle let me know how it comes out I have been looking to see If i can make this too. cherry juice cider....no apple juice pure cherry right?

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Yeah, I'm interested to hear how this comes out also. Already it sounds fantastic!