Cranberry Apfelwein

[tobysbeersandco]

We (roomate, swmbo and i) have done a few brews so far, but are still pretty new to homebrewing.

For my birthday we got another carboy and we decided to try a cranberry cider.

For the most part, we're following edwort's apfelwein recipe, but with some cranberry juice in place of 32 oz of applejuice.

We're using "just cranberries" which is actually water and cranberry juice from concentrate. Very tart juice. (No sugar added, no other juices)

So our adapted recipe goes...

32 oz Just Cranberry cranberry juice
5 1/4 gallons filtered, pasteurized organic apple juice (We're using Treetop)
2 1/4 lbs dextrose
1 five gram packet of Montrachet Wine Yeast

I'm hoping we aren't using too little cranberry juice. I'm more concerned with it not being tart enough than being too tart.

 

[brewnowsky]

That sounds pretty yum, dude!

:rockin:

 

[MeadWitch]

I think it sounds yummy, but then I like sweet and tart at the same time. Salty and sweet also.

 

[HexKrak]

I've been planning on making a 1 gal test batch with these same ratios, but with a different wine yeast. I hope they turn out as good as I'm imagining. Pure cranberry juice is really strong (and flippin hard to find around here), I wouldn't worry too much about there not being enough.

 

[tobysbeersandco]

This ended up tasting great and I highly recommend it. Ours ended up sitting for about 3 months in the carboy, but upon bottling day it tasted pretty good. We added sugar to about half of them to carbonate, and left the other half uncarbonated. Both styles are very excellent, especially after some more time sitting.

We're getting down to the last 10 or so bottles now and the taste has only gotten better. It's really developed a strong fruity and tart character, and I'm sure it'll just get better for the short time its left. (We can't stop drinking it)