Boiling - reduction or carmelization

[lawpaw]

Anyone here have experience boiling down cider to avoid needing to add sugar? Did it work well?

Also, anybody boil 1 gallon to 1/2 gallon into a carmelized syrup to add to the cider fora carmel apple flavor?

 

[Daze]

I made a caramelized syrup that I will be adding to some cider. there are details on how I made it on this thread
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/created-new-recipe-today-creamy-oat-caramel-apple-cider-291822/

As to reducing the cider down, why not just use frozen apple juice concentrate??

 

[lawpaw]

I guess a 100% natural concentrate would be as good.

I meant that I wanted to carmelized the sugars in the apple cider by boiling off the water until the solution was thick enough to truly carmelize.

Might be best to start with concentrate and carmelize that.

Looking for nothing but apple.

 

[Daze]

couple things, first of all the acid in the cider will lower the caramelization point. Second caramelizing will eliminate all the water in the concentrate so I am worried that it might burn. really you won't know tell you try it. If caramelizing the concentrate directly doesn't work I would mix the concentrate with equal parts white sugar and then caramelize. less chance of burning. The other thing to keep in mind caramelization will take place closer to 200º - 250º because of the acids and other apple chemicals.

 

[Daze]

I meant that I wanted to caramelized the sugars in the apple cider by boiling off the water until the solution was thick enough to truly caramelize.

DOES NOT WORK!!!

I tried it today and you can make something usable as a different back sweetener but it is in no way caramel and you have to stop at 240º.

I put the can of 100% natural concentrate in to a pan and turned on the heat about 2/3 The solution quickly heated up until my thermometer read 220º and then it stayed there for about 15 minutes until all the water boiled off. You will know when all the water boils off because the temperature will start to climb and consistency will almost instantly become sort of foamy. At this point the taste was of sweet COOKED apples. The temperature climbed and when it got to 240º I tasted it and it was a really nice apple syrup, something sweet and appley that would have been good on pancakes. At 245º a harsh chemical smell began to come off of the pan as the organic molecules began to break down, but the taste was still a sweet syrup. At 250º it finally started to take on a a caramelized flavor. It was very faint and honestly not very good as the other components in the apple started to break down and the flavor started to be a little off. At 255º it started to smoke slightly and the tastes was defiantly that of something burnt.

Over all the process from concentrate to syrup reduced the volume by about half. I would not recommend this as a back-sweetener unless you do not have access to concentrate and needed to make some syrup from fresh apple juice. keep in mind that when starting with just juice it will take an entire gallon reduced down to get 2 cups of syrup.

 

[lawpaw]

Thanks for the info, that was exactly what I was wondering.

Cooked apple sounds interesting with some real Carmel added in addition.