A good surprise at racking time

I've been experimenting with some different flavored ciders and also trying different things to get the mouthfeel right (to account for using store bought cider/apple juice).

Anyway, I just had the following sitting on primary for 16 days:
Ingredients

• Make a “mouthfeel mixture” (to provide more mouthfeel)
• - 1 cup of water
• - 1 bag of black tea
• - 10 raisins
• - 1 key lime (juiced)
• 1 gallon cider
• ¾ tsp Wyeast beer nutrient blend
• 2 grams Safale S-04 Yeast
• ¾ tsp pectic enzyme

Steps

• Warm 1 cup of apple cider and pitch yeast with yeast nutrient
• Make the “mouthfeel mixture”
• - boil the water, add the tea bag, lime juice and raisins
• - let sit for 7 minutes
• Add tea (with raisins) to cider in the 1 gallon glass jug and shake to combine
• Take OG reading
• Add pectic enzyme
• Add pitched yeast, attach airlock and let sit

My OG was 1.048 and the SG at racking to secondary was a dead even 1.000 for an ABV around 6%

The surprise was how good the cider was after just fermenting for a few weeks with the above ingredients. The lime gives it a nice tartness and the tea gives it that thicker taste that you sometimes miss with really dry ciders.

I went ahead and racked onto a pumpkin pie puree / syrup that I just made in an effort to get a pumpkin pie flavored cider for the fall, but I really want to do a larger batch with just the above ingredients and see how much better it gets after sitting longer.

Hydrometer reading at 1.000


Cider clarity after 16 days


Had a full glass leftover after racking on top of the pumpkin pie puree syrup

I love the idea of a pumpkin pie cider! We are growing sugar pumpkins in the garden now and I am thinking of doing a 5 gallon batch, once Autumn arrives and the pumpkins are ripe! Looking forward to hearing how yours turns out.

illogicallyovercome said:

I love the idea of a pumpkin pie cider! We are growing sugar pumpkins in the garden now and I am thinking of doing a 5 gallon batch, once Autumn arrives and the pumpkins are ripe! Looking forward to hearing how yours turns out.

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It'll be interesting to see how this turns out. I'm hoping for some good pumpkin pie flavors but we'll see how that goes with the cider.

Here's what i used to make my pumpkin pie puree syrup:

• 15 oz 100% pure pumpkin puree (Libby’s brand)
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups water
• 2 sticks cinnamon
• 5 Allspice seeds
• 1 whole clove
• 1 tsp chopped Ginger

I just brought it to a boil and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Let it cool for about 45 minutes ans then poured into the secondary carboy and racked ontop of it. It smelled really good and by using whole spices I'm hoping to reduce any debris from making it into the bottles

This will indeed be interesting! Good luck!