What does your cider taste like?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

UncaMarc

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 31, 2012
Messages
73
Reaction score
4
Location
Sparta
I've tried the commercial ciders. I've tried the "craft ciders". My favorite is JK Scrupmy. In fact, I am writing a few articles about them as a member of the American Press Association. They will be finished soon.

I have three batches of my own going. All of them are from fresh pressed apples.

One batch is the Scrumpy way, no additives only apples and naturally occurring yeast. It is in the secondary carboy. First taste is like sewer water. No carbonation, no sweetness, nothing but "spit quickly".

The second batch is fully treated. I've outlined on other threads how I managed it. Major difference is that I used Nottingham yeast. I've not tasted it at all, yet.

The third batch is fully treated, and uses Safeale yeast. I tasted it tonight. Flavorless, almost apple wine.

What the flock can I do to get the kind of incredible taste of JK Scrumpy farmhouse cider without a bunch of backside manipulation?

I've seen their operation from the inside. It's truly apple juice in big plastic vats, racking from one to the other then into bottles. Seriously, there is no back sweetening, no artificial carbonation, nothing.

And if you think what they sell in bottles is good, you ought to taste what they have on tap. If they could ever capture that fresh clean effervescence in a bottle, the Anhueser horses would be put out to pasture.

So what does your cider taste like? Send me somewhere to another brand that you think is close to what you are producing. I'd like to see them all.

And I will be writing about them and the whole cider market.

I think we're onto something here and I want to produce a cider I can be proud to serve. So far I'm a miserable failure by comparison to the good ones.

Please share your secrets.
 
I'm really wanting to make something like Angry Orchard Crisp or Crispin Original. They've overtaken Strongbow as my favorites.
 
I'm a huge fan of 2 Towns Cider out of Corvallis Or. Not a huge fan of JK Scrumpy, but I might have had a bad bottle. I tried Original Sin, nice and dry-and I like Angry Orchard. I may be weird but I like the Ginger Apple flavor too. Foxbarrel has some great pear ciders I'd like to figure out how to clone, and I'm really into the English Aspall Blackberry cider. I need to try some of the other flavors, but they are about $8 a bottle, so I ration it.
 
What the flock can I do to get the kind of incredible taste of JK Scrumpy farmhouse cider without a bunch of backside manipulation?

No amount of backside manipulation will get you there. The taste of JKS is the natural apple sugar. Start with a good juice mix from an organic orchard (ie no nitrogen fertilizer), good wild yeast strain (this is somewhat a matter of luck) and ferment verrrry cool and slow. You can also make a passable clone using WLP380 and brown sugar. There was a thread on JKS clone a few years ago. Search for Scrumpy or Koan and you should be able to find it.
 
I tried to "steal" Scrumpys yeast with an agar plate but nothing grew. As CvilleKevin pointed out (kinda), the best way to get JK Scrumpys is to buy a bottle.
What does my cider taste like... Apples. Silly question.
Just because apples are fresh pressed doesn't mean it will turn out. Last year was a total bust for me because I used the wrong apples. (I used apples entirely from one mile from my house, all nameless wild apples. A very novel but bad idea.) This year I searched out a good orchard with a great selection of apples. Concequently I found out that Woodchuck uses Mac and Empire. Nothing all that magical, just lots of easy to find and very plentiful apples.
 
I'm not a huge fan of JK Scrumpy, either. 2 Towns Cider has some good ones but some are too sweet for me. My favorite by a long shot is a dry cider by Left Field in Vancouver, BC.

My own latest is very carbonated without being over the top. It feels great in the mouth. It's Honey-crisp juice with champagne yeast and isinglass as a fining agent. It truly tastes great and would go toe-to-toe with Crispin's Honey-crisp cider any day of the week.
 
I've been making cider with apples I'm grinding and pressing myself for about 3 years. Plus about 8 years before that using jugs of sweet cider purchased from the orchard.
The best cider to my taste comes from late season apples. Around here
that means last week of October to middle of November. If the farmer will let you pick them off the ground, do that because its likely those apples are very ripe. I store the apples for about a month before grinding and pressing. My best apple blends occur when I have as many different kinds of apples as I can get. I like to use 10-15 varieties if I can get them. If you use really tart apples, keep them to no more than 20 % (by weight), crab apples should be 15-20%, and for all the rest, I use a combination of sweet and semi-tart. It all depends on what you can get in your area and if they have been left to hang on the tree.
Most commercial apples you can buy are picked too early.
I've tried a variety of yeast and last year used Mangrove Jack's ciderhouse select and liked the resulting cider a lot. I don't add sulphites or yeast nutrient, but so. So that's about it, there are lots of other tricks to try. Good Luck.
 
I agree that late season apples give better cider but I still make decent cider from early-mid season apples. The thing is that more ripening time gives better flavour, so late season apples get longer to ripen. Longer ripening means leaving the apples until they are falling from the tree, the traditional measure is when one third of the fruit has fallen on the ground,the tree is ready to harvest. With early apples you should discard the fruit that falls first, they won't be very ripe, only use the fruit that stays on the tree a bit longer. With late season trees most of the fruit should be good to use.

You shouldn't worry about using fruit that has fallen on the ground, but give it a wash if you don't like the idea of using dirty fruit.
 
You shouldn't worry about using fruit that has fallen on the ground, but give it a wash if you don't like the idea of using dirty fruit.
Great Caesars ghost, where I used to live ground apples were highly contaminated and a source of gut wrenching stomach attacks and even death (usually children) during the raw cider craze. Washing may not help: http://www.about-ecoli.com/ecoli_outbreaks/view/baughters-apple-cider-e.-coli-outbreak/#.V2CqMo5fvZQ Deer get all over downed apples and infect them with e-coli and such. Other critters get involved too, like the ones that make melons notorious for salmonella.
 
Great Caesars ghost, where I used to live ground apples were highly contaminated and a source of gut wrenching stomach attacks and even death (usually children) during the raw cider craze. Washing may not help: http://www.about-ecoli.com/ecoli_outbreaks/view/baughters-apple-cider-e.-coli-outbreak/#.V2CqMo5fvZQ Deer get all over downed apples and infect them with e-coli and such. Other critters get involved too, like the ones that make melons notorious for salmonella.

This is a common misconception. For a start if the orchard floor is grassed and not grazed recently it is perfectly safe to eat raw apples straight from the ground. You could even say it is beneficial to your gut microflora and your immune system. However we are not talking about raw fruit or raw juice, we are talking hard cider that has been fermented with a pH under 4.0 and more than 5% abv. There aren't any pathogens that will survive those conditions and there aren't any cases of disease caused by microbes in hard cider. Did you know that winegrapes are never washed, they go straight from the vine to the crusher? You can't get E coli from hard cider, you should check your facts.
 
My first 3 brews:

1. My first one wasn't that nice at room temperature, but quite dry and drinkable chilled using a mixed apple/pear juice. Certainly nothing worth having people taste (2nd fermentation 2 weeks, chilled).

2. My pear cider using home brand stuff that was 99.9% cloudy pear juice (so sweet it was almost sour) mellowed beautifully like a nice semi-sweet juice with a hint of dryness, only added extra sugar to increase %, settled at 1010 (2 weeks primary, 2 months secondary)

3. My 2nd apple/pear blend is a bit of an odd one. I added cinnamon and cloves for 5 days in secondary, but without knowing how many cloves I put too many in, so it had a sharp flavour and had to backsweeten with a fair bit of stevia. It's smooth now with a tiny hint of backsweetening but a sharp clove flavour when it hits, but really smooth and balanced after taste (2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary[5 days with additives], 2 months tertiary)
 
This is a common misconception. For a start if the orchard floor is grassed and not grazed recently it is perfectly safe to eat raw apples straight from the ground. You could even say it is beneficial to your gut microflora and your immune system. However we are not talking about raw fruit or raw juice, we are talking hard cider that has been fermented with a pH under 4.0 and more than 5% abv. There aren't any pathogens that will survive those conditions and there aren't any cases of disease caused by microbes in hard cider. Did you know that winegrapes are never washed, they go straight from the vine to the crusher? You can't get E coli from hard cider, you should check your facts.

Right or wrong, here in NY all commercially pressed apple juice MUST be pasteurized because of the fear of e-coli coming from the use of dropped apples. Commercial orchards tend to use UV pasteurization. You cannot legally purchase juice even for hard cider unless it has been treated.
 
Great Caesars ghost, where I used to live ground apples were highly contaminated and a source of gut wrenching stomach attacks and even death (usually children) during the raw cider craze. Washing may not help: http://www.about-ecoli.com/ecoli_outbreaks/view/baughters-apple-cider-e.-coli-outbreak/#.V2CqMo5fvZQ Deer get all over downed apples and infect them with e-coli and such. Other critters get involved too, like the ones that make melons notorious for salmonella.

Yes NY does go a bit above and beyond,
On May 30, 2012, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the Portion Cap Rule, a proposed amendment to article 81 of the New York City Health Code, that would require "food service establishments" (FSEs) to cap at 16 ounces the size of cups and containers used to offer, provide and sell sugary beverages.:ban:
 
I was able to sample J.K's Scrumpy on Saturday evening a little to sweet for me, the apple was right up front, had a nice tartness to it.

I was given a taster of Stella Atrois Cider this last Sunday this was more to my liking, drier not to sweet and seemed to have a hint of cinnamon at the end, SWMBO liked it very much.
Question I noticed that the carbonation level is just there on both of these Ciders, I'll be trying to carb my first cider to around the same lvl.
 
I would have to say almost all of my ciders have tasted differently; I have used different blends of juices and fruits and I have also used different yeasts. My current batch is definitely apple wine as I believe it to be in the 11-12% ABV range. I really like making applejack and 90% of what I make goes to applejack production. I have tasted Stella Cidre and it wasn't bad, and the Angry Orchard variety pack was okay to try once... SWMBO prefers her cider a bit sweeter than I generally like it so I have to find a happy medium. I guess this didn't answer your question, did it?
 
I've got to say that my first apple brew tastes better than Strongbow apple. Pretty happy with that.
Pear is quite nice too, tastes more like pear juice than anything else with a hint of dryness.
 
Back
Top