Cranberry Apfelwein from Concentrate

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brewssuds

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I decided to try a Christmasy variation on the legendary Apfelwein:

Ingredients:

- 17 cans frozen apple juice concentrate (341 ml per can)
- 1 package fresh cranberries (340 g)
- 1 kg dextrose
- 2 packets Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast

Process:

- Allow apple juice concentrate to thaw at room temperature
- Rinse cranberries
- Put cranberries in pot and cover with about an inch of water
- Boil for 10 minutes
- Add 1 kg dextrose, 2 litres of water, and 4 cans of frozen apple juice concentrate
- bring to boil for 15 minutes
- While boiling, add remaining apple juice concentrate to sanitized carboy
- Add cranberry/dextrose/apple juice mixture to carboy
- Top up with cold water
- Pitch both packages of yeast directly into carboy (no starter) at 20 degrees C
- Add airlock

Notes:
- Fermentation started extremely quickly
- Next time, I'll use a proper primary instead of a carboy, due to the fact that the neck of the carboy kept getting clogged with cranberries/krausen and blowing off
 
Update (bottled tonight):

For the first few days of fermentation, the color was a beautiful, brillant red, as if someone had cut into a living ruby and exposed its majesty for all to see. Over time, the color faded until what was left resembled a tincture of dilute iodine tainted with blood from a cut finger.

The final gravity hit 1.000 on the nose (the OG is lost to posterity due to an over-exuberant wife cleaning off a critical section on a whiteboard).

The taste was pleasant, if underwhelming; instead of the orgiastic blast of cranberry majesty that I was expecting, I was met with a palatable taste of apple tinged with a slight tartness. Next time, I think quadrupling the amount of cranberries is in order.

I primed with a cup of dextrose (23 L batch)... perhaps time and patience will work its magic... if perchance any of this elixir survives past New Year's Eve.
 
Cranberries can be pretty great when added after fermentation. Even ocean spray has a pretty cool character to it when added to backsweeten just a little. This sounds pretty awesome though!
 
Update II

Cracked open a bottle tonight (fairly premature, I know, but other stocks are dwindling and I'm a desperate man!). Nicely carbonated, but still has a ways to go. Not much cranberry flavour, but there is a hint of tartness that I don't get with a "normal" Apfelwein.
 
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