Caramel apple cider

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good point.

I am wondering though, and just throwing this out there, if I could get enough of the cinnamon and nutmeg flavor into the "tea" I could leave the ground remnants behind in the boil pot. Almost like making an extract? I have a bunch of ground spices, that aren't old, that I could use to save the money of buying whole ones.
 
Interesting post. Has anyone heard how this has turned out? SWMBO would probably appreciate if I made a batch of this as well so she'll have something to drink that isn't too wine-y. I saw a question above that I don't believe was answered so I'll ask again: would a caramel extract work well since it doesn't have any sugar and shouldn't ferment out? I think after this spiced cider recipe I am working on I'll have to try this.
Newbie question: what is this malt crystal stuff you are all talking about? I did a google search and it is showing beer malt. If that is the correct stuff, why would you use beer malt for a cider?
 
crystal malt is and a malt that is roasted to different color levels and thus impart different amounts of caramel flavors all the way to raisny. it is a beer type malt but more for flavor and color than actually tasting beery.
 
Why not use condensed milk. If you boil the condensed milk in the unopened cans for three hours turning over every half hour you can make your own caramel. Shouldn't this be a good caramel syrup for the cider? I have been trying to think of a way to make a caramel apple cider also. I make a great caramel pie this way and maybe it could be used this way also.
 
Boil for 3 hours in unopened cans?

How would you know when it's boiling if the can isn't opened?

If it WAS boiling, wouldn't the can explode?

And, if you opened the can and used a pot to boil it in, wouldn't you be left with some dry, hard, black cement after 3 hours?

Plus, who wants to stand over a stove for 3 hours?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love caramel, but maybe I'm missing something here.

Pogo

BTW - Care to share that caramel pie recipe?
 
Boil for 3 hours in unopened cans?

How would you know when it's boiling if the can isn't opened?

If it WAS boiling, wouldn't the can explode?

And, if you opened the can and used a pot to boil it in, wouldn't you be left with some dry, hard, black cement after 3 hours?

Plus, who wants to stand over a stove for 3 hours?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love caramel, but maybe I'm missing something here.

Pogo

BTW - Care to share that caramel pie recipe?

You heat the can in a pot of water. If you get it to hot i can DEFINITELY be dangerous, at the very least it will ruin the sauce.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2148841_caramel-milk-spread.html
 
Whether or not you get caramel like this would you really want a dairy product in your cider? That would scare me to death. I just don't think milk or milk bi-products belong in cider.

If someone where to do this I'd make the caramel from sugar as suggested before. Caramel is cooked sugar. I've read about folks adding butter to caramel recipes but you can find recipes where it is just cooked sugar.

That caramel taste is the cooking or browning. I suppose one might be able to try caramel syrups for coffee like Torani. Not the SAUCE but the syrups like in a 750ml bottle.

Why not use condensed milk. If you boil the condensed milk in the unopened cans for three hours turning over every half hour you can make your own caramel. Shouldn't this be a good caramel syrup for the cider? I have been trying to think of a way to make a caramel apple cider also. I make a great caramel pie this way and maybe it could be used this way also.
 
I thought the same things about the cans of condensed milk myself when I first started making caramel pies. Take the labels of the cans and put the cans in enough water to cover the cans. You can put a little vegetable oil in the water this will actually keep the cans from popping. It works I make caramel pies this way all the time.
 
Put this together today:

3 gallons fresh cider from the mill.
.5lbs crystal 40
.5 crystal 80
wlp011 yeast
3 tsp. yeast nutrient


I steeped the grains for 40mins in 150ish degree water and then brought the temperature to 170 and then boiled the wort for 15 minutes. Chilled it and through it in with the cider. It smelled good. The cider I used was rather tart so hopefully the crystal will balance it out. Probably should have made a starter though for the yeast. I'll keep this thread updated.
 
I jumped in on this tonight... I used what I had on hand...

2 gallons apple juice
8oz crystal 10L
4oz lbs chocolate malt
wp300 from starter

I ended up with almost 3 gallons. It tasted great pre-fermented btw! OG was 1.046, so it should be a nice drinkable cider with some sweetness from the unfermentable sugars.

I steeped the crystal and chocolate in 155 for 15 mins. It was dark as coffee and the cider was dark too.

I'll update in a week.
 
Ooooh caramel chocolate apple, now that sounds good. Wait are we brewing brews or candies? Haha, keep us updated, everybody who went in on this.
 
Darn I have a bunch of chocolate malt laying around too...that should definitely give it a nice malty background. Just waiting on mine to start bubbling. Usually takes 48 hours without starter.
 
Now, I know I am an abomination to all men around the world but, I don't like beer. Does using crystal and the chocolate malt add any beer -type flavors to the cider? Or is that the hops that makes beer taste like beer?
 
this is all experimentation but what I am trying to get and others is a sweet background taste to the cider. so you should be beer taste free.


edit: got home from work and it's bubbling away nicely and smelling great out of the air lock!
 
Well the batch I made on last Monday is all good! It fermented out out 1.006 and I went ahead and bottled it. I didn't want it to ferment all the way out so that it would be dry. The taste was awesome, it reminded me of the granny smith woodchuck. The malt was a very nice flavor addition.
 
WLP 300 to make cider? Interesting. I guess if you like apple-banana sauce sprinkled with clove dust. :mug:
 
Mine is going good. I poked my head into the bucket and there appears to have been a huge karausen on it. Left over bubbles from the four gallon mark to the bottom of the lid! Five inches or so. Plus some huge bubbles on the top of the cider. I'm going to let it go for at least another week before checking it and then possibly bottling it then. Still smelling good.
 
I'm glad everyone kept this thread alive while I was gone :) Life has kept me super busy lately, and I haven't had much time to brew.

Sadly, this experiment did not work out for me. You can see in one of my earlier posts that I had commented about my cider tasting sour, but shrugged it off because it was still green. Unfortunately, letting it sit hasn't helped any- it's still very sour, and not a good tartness- more like an acidity. It's possible that I had gotten an infection earlier on (as I had a lot of problems with blow off and yeast getting all over the place.) It is also possible that my choice of yeast just didn't mesh with what I was trying to do as well. I had read that some people got good results flavor-wise with the hefe yeast, and I also remember reading some reports of sourness. Heck, even my choice of juice could have been bad...who knows.

It's still sitting in the carboy, but I given up hope on it (I just haven't had the time to dump it yet.) However, I would LOVE to hear how some of the other batches mentioned here have turned out. I still think that a recipe similar to what has been tried here could be really good. If I try it again, I'll probably just use regular apple juice, and maybe a cider yeast or a wine yeast again. Try to keep it simpler. I have a few beers lined up to brew next though, so any 2nd attempts at caramel cider will probably have to wait a bit.
 
Ok, I'm going to be doing this in the next week or so. I'm going to go with my plan of concentrate and cider, but in different proportions. I'm going to steep 1 pound of crystal 20, and 1 pound of crystal 60, in 2 gallons of water. I'll add enough concentrate to this to get it to "normal" juice concentration, and then top it off with 3 gallons of cider (I'm going to try Musselman's- they sell it at the grocery store near me, and it's the only cider- not juice- which does not have sorbate added to it.) I'll be fermenting this with WLP300 Hefe yeast.

I'm hoping this will turn out well!

My only suggestion is as follows:
If you're going to use cider and a hefe yeast, its definitely not going to be clear. Since this is the case, why dont' you steep the crystal in cider rather than water - pectin haze won't really be a problem since is cloudy anyway.

Either way it will be good. Good luck with it! :mug:
 
Mine didn't turn out as totally planned. Mine went real dry from 1.055 to 1.006 and tastes like granny smith apples. Wiped out the sweetness totally. I put it in secondary with 1tbls cinnamon, 1tbls nutmeg, 1 cup drown sugar, 1 cup white sugar in about 1 1/2 cups water heated. I am just going to let it sit for a few days before I bottle it. Plus my cider was tart to begin with. Maybe waiting till the end of the season cider for next year and it could start off sweeter. It will be and is good just not sweet.
 
Adam, I would definitely suggest you back sweeten it, don't forget to stabilize with sorbate and sulfite first. But at 1.006, I wouldn't say it is real dry. Most ciders will drop down below 1.000, and in fact 1.006 would be partly dry to semi-dry.
 
Would the two cups sugars be backsweeten? I guess I could throw in some more. I know they are fermentable though. I guess then I could use some chemcials. I guess I could just let it sit in secondary for a few days and run and get the chemicals to fully backsweeten. Can't make it to a homebrew shop until Monday the earliest.
Also what would qualify as a non fermentable sugar?
 
If it's fermentable - it's not going to backsweeten because the yeasties will just eat it up.

Do some searching, Lactose is one of the more known unfermentables, but there are sure to be others.
 
Unfermentables: Lactose, splenda, stevia, etc

If you want to use fermentable sugars like cane, corn, honey, maple syrup or anything else, you need to stabilize your cider first. This is done with a dose of both k-metasulfite and sorbate. This will stop yeast reproduction, and assuming your fermentation is complete, will halt a renewed fermentation. After the dosing, I think you are supposed to wait 24 hours (I have yet to backsweeten since I like it dry) then rack your cider in with your sweetening sugar.

I wouldn't guess at how much sugar to add, as you may not add enough or you may make it far to sweet. I would suggest taking out a sample and sweetening that. Then either measure that SG and add enough sugar to get to that SG for the whole batch, or do some math like 1 tablespoon in 5 oz = X cups in 1 gallon.
 
Be careful with amounts, it can be pretty sweet, and if you don't like it you would want to avoid getting an artificial flavor (I kind of like the artificial taste of diet drinks) Also, be very careful when buying splenda, because some of it is mixed with real sugar, which would make it partially fermentable.
 
I want to add the lactose at bottling like was mentioned in the first post. Would you use that instead of priming sugar? And would it be a direct replacement using the same quantity, or is the lactose in addition to the priming sugar?

Lactose doesn't ferment at all, so you add it in addition to the priming sugar. You use the same amount of priming sugar as you normally would.
 
After the addition of the sugars and spices and letting it sit for a week, it was better. Did a little taste testing, math and splenda adding (1.5 cups) and I think it will be really good now. I wanted it sweet for my wife to enjoy and with the spices I think it just turned into my holiday brew!
 
Had a first sample today. Pretty damn good. the wife loves it so that's all that matters. Next time I would add brown sugar to the initial boil and let the yeast stop closer to 1.012 or so. The splenda addition is good but seems a little artificial. Hopefully it will get even better closer to thanksgiving.
 
I saw someone in here posted they used molasses how much did you use, and how did it come out? Fluid Oz's and solid Oz's vary greatly. I'm considering using it in my next batch any and all info in this regard would be greatly appreciated!!!
 
Not sure how this would work since I haven't done it personally yet but I got a stout recipe from a friend that uses caramel and chocolate flavorings in the recipe. They add the flavorings after fermentation is complete when the beer is kegged. They recommended the LorAnn Oils Caramel Flavor and Chocolate Flavor. Since this is added at the time of kegging (maybe 1-2 teaspoons) it really wouldn't matter if it had preservatives or anything in it. I assume this could work for cider as well...kind of the easy way out but I still think it would taste good.
 
Just alittle update. My cider has to be served really, really cold otherwise band aids...bummer. I think when I rushed through just throwing some sugars and spices in it the first time it started fermenting again, duh, and I took it off too soon. Plus the addition of splenda is sweet. I would do maybe 3/4 cups instead of 1.5 cups for 4 gallons next time.
 
I was reading through the Mead forum a week or so ago (I've been getting back into brewing, and have been preparing to finally do the raspberry mead/melomel I've been planning on,) and saw a link back to this thread when someone was asking about a caramel cyser I believe. It threw me for a bit of a loop that my old thread turned into a decent source of information :eek: It also reminded me that I never went back to try to make a good caramel apple cider, after my first one turned into a failure (I believe now that it was a combination of the base cider being too sour to begin with, and either a minor infection that eventually took over from my leaving the cider in the primary for far too long, or simply a poor choice of yeast- despite others having good results with WLP300.)

Basically, I think I tried to get a little too fancy with my ingredients, so I'm going to go back to some things that I know have worked for me in the past. I am going to use plain apple juice (Motts,) which I used in my original batch of Apfelwein with good results. I may also go with just Crystal 60, as that gave me a nice caramel flavor in the American Amber I brewed last year.

Of course, it can't all be simple :D I think I am going to try carmelizing some malt extract to add to the cider, as I have read that carmelized malt can give a nice toffee-like flavor to beer (as in Scottish ales.) I'm also going to shy away from using the hefe yeast again. I am looking at two options. If I go back to using a wine yeast, I have a few packs of Cotes Des Blancs which is supposed to be good for fermenting apple musts. Or, if I want to try another ale yeast, I may try S-04 as I have read of some who have had good results with it leaving some residual sweetness and apple aroma.

Either way, I will still be shooting for a lower OG, as I do not want to make this another dry Apfelwein-like drink. The carmelized malt extract will probably be only one pound, and I may just steep the crystal in heated juice for simplicity's sake vs. having to mess around with concentrates of unknown flavor (if the cider is a little cloudy from the heat, then so be it.)

So...

5 gallons Mott's Juice
1lb light DME, dissolved in a small amount of water and boiled down to caramel
1 or two pounds of Crystal 60 (I used two pounds of Crystal before, I may not need so much with the caramelized malt)
Cotes des Blancs or S-04


I'd also be curious to hear back from some of those who may have tried making this and may not have posted their results. :mug:
 
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