Greetings from snowbound Texas!
My father in law has been making wine for a couple years now, and suckered me into this hobby... I'm usually a beer and cider drinker, but enjoy wine as well. So far, I've made a Riesling and a Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel, both of which turned out amazing considering it was a first intro attempt to the world of homebrew, and now I'm hooked!
At the end of the holidays, I ended up with quite a bit (~2gal) of Martinelli's unfiltered cider left over from making stove-top hard cider, and decided to throw some Notty on top of it and see what happened. It turned out okay, but not quite what I was looking for as it seemed to lose too much body in the long run. This just got me more and more interested in trying to recreate one of my personal favorites, the Artisinal Reserve from Crispin.
My most recent purchase was a complete cider kit from BrewDemon, not for the cider quality per-se but I like the smaller batch conical fermenter. Again, a 2 gallon batch of their plain jane Forbidden Fruit Hard Cider turned out, eh, meh if you know what I mean.
Currently I have 2 gallons of Trader Joe's Honeycrisp Cider brewing with White Labs WLP-775 English Cider Yeast, SG 1.052, hopefully yielding PA 6.8%. I'm planning on trying to make this as close to the yellow label Honeycrisp Crispin Artisinal Reserve as possible.
Have any of you attempted a clone of either of the Crispins that I have included with this post (Honeycrisp or The Saint)? I am wondering how to get that amazing texture and finish that both of these have and a very low level of sweetness. I understand that both of these are back sweetened, but the label states that there is no sorbate or preservatives, so stove top pasteurization must be in order here... recipes for a clone? Or something close?
Ideas or thoughts?
My father in law has been making wine for a couple years now, and suckered me into this hobby... I'm usually a beer and cider drinker, but enjoy wine as well. So far, I've made a Riesling and a Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel, both of which turned out amazing considering it was a first intro attempt to the world of homebrew, and now I'm hooked!
At the end of the holidays, I ended up with quite a bit (~2gal) of Martinelli's unfiltered cider left over from making stove-top hard cider, and decided to throw some Notty on top of it and see what happened. It turned out okay, but not quite what I was looking for as it seemed to lose too much body in the long run. This just got me more and more interested in trying to recreate one of my personal favorites, the Artisinal Reserve from Crispin.
My most recent purchase was a complete cider kit from BrewDemon, not for the cider quality per-se but I like the smaller batch conical fermenter. Again, a 2 gallon batch of their plain jane Forbidden Fruit Hard Cider turned out, eh, meh if you know what I mean.
Currently I have 2 gallons of Trader Joe's Honeycrisp Cider brewing with White Labs WLP-775 English Cider Yeast, SG 1.052, hopefully yielding PA 6.8%. I'm planning on trying to make this as close to the yellow label Honeycrisp Crispin Artisinal Reserve as possible.
Have any of you attempted a clone of either of the Crispins that I have included with this post (Honeycrisp or The Saint)? I am wondering how to get that amazing texture and finish that both of these have and a very low level of sweetness. I understand that both of these are back sweetened, but the label states that there is no sorbate or preservatives, so stove top pasteurization must be in order here... recipes for a clone? Or something close?
Ideas or thoughts?
