Has anyone tried non-fruit flavored cider?

[outstretched]

Greetings Fellow Brewers,

I have been brewing with a buddy of mine for about 4 years and he has always encouraged me to get into ciders as he makes really good beer but his ciders are not so good and it'd give me something to do.

I recently made my first batch of cider and got to thinking about spicing / flavoring good apple combinations (and abnormal) and wondering if anyone else has tried it?

Current Planned Ciders:
1. Maple / Caramel (Real stuff from a tree)
2. Peanut Butter (I love a good tart apple with peanut butter on it.)
3. Bacon (Because it's bacon and it's $7 to make a one gallon sampler.)
4. Nuts? (Walnuts, Hazelnuts)

Just curious as to what you guys think. I am an out of the box thinker and don't want just apple juice and sugar cider.

 

[oldmate]

I know of people who have tried nuts, it's hard because of all the oils, try looking at gotmead.com (it's not cider, but it's essentially the same process). I have a recipe for caramel apple cider in the recipe section and I'm bottling my maple cider tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that comes out. Can't imagine anything with bacon because of the fat/oils. If you are going on the bacon road, I'd buy those artificially flavoured bacon bits from Masterfoods (not sure if they're in America or not) due to fear of food poisoning. As for the peanut butter, I can imagine that being VERY overpowering.

 

[smegger]

Yeah I would certainly steer clear of real bacon as mentioned above.
I knew a guy who made bacon vodka once, it smelled like rancid bacon fat after a day or 2.

 

[RobWalker]

winter spice and caramel/toffee apple are both awesome. you could try a pumpkin cider too, as it's a vegetable, and elderflower cider is a flower. I tried an elderflower cider once - added 40g, boiled, to a 5gal batch in the primary. it took the flavour very well. the cider itself was rubbish because it was a kit cider - had it been in a cider from juice, it probably would have been fantastic.