Recent content by katzgejm

A good solution for future batches is to make your hibiscus tea real, REAL strong -- like 4x strong. all the flavour, 25% of the water

I salt my cider often right in the pint glass. Do some trials with various additions of different salts and see how it turns out. Salt and apple and therefore salt and cider mix well

Woah, you're suggesting 20g/L?! That seems really, really heavy to me, considering you dry hop a cider with ~2g/L. Are spruce tips really 10% the potency of hops?

I just received 40L pure, fresh rhubarb juice. Thinking I'll add about 20L to 400L apple juice, ferment that out, and then backsweeten with the remaining 20L of juice with sugar added to bring the total residual to around 25g/L. I'll let you know how it goes.

oak chips are readily available in different toast levels at your local beer/wine store. or you can get creative and toast some wood yourself if you have access to good lumber. vanillin is naturally extracted from toasted oak. it's a vanilla-like compound inherent to the wood. like with...

i just finished an oaked cider and it turned out very well. organic apples (red delicious, empire, mac) SG = 1.056 two weeks at 12*C cold crashed and sulphited 40ppm at 1.012. 3g/L medium toast american oak chips for 36hrs. tons of toffee, buttersotch, vanilla warmth on the nose and a great...

keep in mind that brown sugar contains molasses, which contains unfermentables that will affect your SG. 1.082 won't be pure sugar and your potential abv won't be quite 10+%

i'll be doing a similar rhubarb cider come may. i think i'll be fermenting a little rhubarb in the primary just to give the whole thing a nice, integrated rhubarb bent. might include some strawberry in the backsweetening syrup...