Mincemeat Cider

I was going to try to do something that captured the flavor of mincemeat pie for fall.

(refresher for anyone not in the know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mince_pie)

I was thinking perhaps something along the lines of:

5gal unfiltered apple cider
4# local clover honey
Safbrew S-33 Dry Ale Yeast

Primary for a week

Then do a puree of 3# of raisins, ginger syrup, ceylon cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and allspice, and add to secondary.

Thoughts?

Ginger syrup would probably contain sugar so be careful unless you want more fermentables in there. Yours is a pretty common recipe give or take so have a search, especially for winter spice cider. Adding the spices post fermentation will cause them to taste more like their natural flavour a lot of people steep them in., I'd personally use a little malt in the recipe for a biscuity/baked sort of flavour

RobWalker said:

Ginger syrup would probably contain sugar so be careful unless you want more fermentables in there. Yours is a pretty common recipe give or take so have a search, especially for winter spice cider. Adding the spices post fermentation will cause them to taste more like their natural flavour a lot of people steep them in., I'd personally use a little malt in the recipe for a biscuity/baked sort of flavour

Click to expand...

There is a recipe floating around on here for a graham cracker ale, that uses actual graham crackers. (link) - I wonder if I could get away with that.

You would have to mash them I think. It's easy on a small scale, but bear in mins the beer making process is quite different to cider - but yeah, go for it!

Sounds like a plan. Thanks for the help

I've been wanting to do a cider for a while now, and having a an alcoholic spice-filled apple pie in a glass is just what the doctor ordered.

The mince for this is done.

3# of Raisins
14.5 oz Sour cherries
8 fl oz of Ginger syrup

1.25 tbsp Allspice
1.25 tbsp Ceylon Cinnamon
1.25 tbsp Nutmeg
1.00 tbsp Vanilla Bean Paste
0.50 tbsp Clove

Pureed the fruit and syrup, and then added to a stainless pot, brought to a boil, then added the spices.

I think instead of a primary and secondary, I'm just going to do a single fermentation.

Oh man, I know what I'm going to be breaking in my new carboy with. Think I'll swap in coriander for the vanilla and do a rehydrated dried-fruit mix instead of cherries.

I put this together today with 5gal of local apple cider, 2# of local wildflower honey and 1# of muscovado sugar - and had an O.G. of 1.082.

It was really difficult to stop drinking the cider long enough to let some ferment.


Here is a roundup of what I did:

Mince
3# of Raisins
14.5 oz can of Sour cherries (in water)
8 fl oz of Ginger syrup

1.25 tbsp Allspice
1.25 tbsp Ceylon Cinnamon
1.25 tbsp Nutmeg
1.00 tbsp Vanilla Bean Paste
0.50 tbsp Clove

Pureed the fruit and syrup, and then added to a stainless pot, brought to a boil, then added the spices.

Added to a covered (and sanitized) pyrex dish and let sit overnight


Boil
5gal of local (Virginia) apple cider
2# of local wildflower honey
1# of Muscovado sugar

Once the cider came to a boil, I added the honey, sugar, and mince, and let boil for 30min @200 F.

Starting gravity: 1.082
Final gravity @ 7 days: 1.001
ABV: 10.8%
Pitched Safbrew S-33 Dry Ale Yeast

The mince was pretty yummy on its own. I had a couple other people taste it and they thought it would be good either warm on vanilla ice cream, in a pie, or spread on toast.

Bubble bubble...

So being from Australia I was pretty confused, if you asked for a mince meat pie here you'd get a meat pie covered in tomato sauce (ketchup). I was expecting a discussion on old-fashioned scrumpy! Hope it turns out well.

oldmate said:

So being from Australia I was pretty confused, if you asked for a mince meat pie here you'd get a meat pie covered in tomato sauce (ketchup). I was expecting a discussion on old-fashioned scrumpy! Hope it turns out well.

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My ex wife is from Australia... I'll try not to hold it against you

All kidding aside, I hope it turns out well too. I'm on travel, but I'm going to take a gravity reading when I get back on Friday.

SG - 1.082
FG - 1.001
So I think we're looking at around - 10.8 % ABV

I'm contemplating introducing some more unfermented apple cider to bring the ABV down a little.