Gruit Cider

[Zymomancer]

I'm never really satisfied making a batch unless I'm experimenting in some way, and I was a bit curious about dry-hopped cider. I also recently got access to a neighbour's herb garden and was even more curious about what gruit herbs would taste like in cider. I didn't have the classical combination, but based on the available herbs I was able to settle on a mix that I like: yarrow, wild bergamot, and sage.

I was also planning on trying to get juice out of some particularly sour green apples I picked, but since I didn't have a press I tried a warm maceration method that I completely botched by letting it get too warm. I was able to squeeze out a small amount of very, very strong juice, and made up the rest with store-bought dessert apple juice. In the end, it actually worked out fine, the amount of acidity is just perfect. The pectin likely set, so it's going to be cloudy, but I don't really care.

It's not quite finished yet, it's only been a few days in secondary, but I just tasted it after some time steeping in the herbs so I felt like I was ready to post about it.

The aroma is great, a pleasant woodsy herbal scent, all three herbs have fragrant aromas on their own so I wasn't at all surprised that the combination would be nice.

Taste-wise, it's certainly interesting, I like it but could completely understand if no one else did. Just like gruit ale, it's weird because it's so far removed from modern tastes. Overall the herbal flavour seems just the right strength, but I'm taking the sample from the very top where the leaves are floating so it's probably artificially strong. The sage seems to be the strongest flavour, and the bittering from the yarrow is so weak that it doesn't really seem very bitter at all. The wild bergamot gives it a spiciness that I really enjoy... I might add a bit more of it.

I tasted the gravity samples before I added the herbs, and was already very satisfied with the taste. I was aiming for a dry, sour cider and that's pretty much exactly what it was. I plan to bottle with 2 volumes CO2.

Action shots!

Batch size: 1 gallon
Ingredients
~500mL Fresh juice from sour cooking(?) apples
~3L Store-bought apple juice
1 lime Lime juice, no zest
½ tsp Safale S-04

Nurtient:
1 tsp baker's yeast steeped in ½ cup boiling water for a few minutes

Dry-hop additions:
3g fresh yarrow
3g fresh wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), leaves only
3g fresh sage

Primary for 1 month (SG 1.002)
Put herbs in secondary and rack on top of them
Keep in secondary for a week before bottling
Add enough sugar for 2.0 volumes CO2

 

[ifso215]

What kind of yeast are you using? I want to try a gruit cider as well, I'm sitting on close to a pound of sweet gale that I need to use. Being in Canada, have you considered adding Mt. Scio Savoury from Newfoundland? I've got a large bag of that for when I cook my grandmother's recipes and the very black-tea like aroma might be nice addition in one of my future batches.

My current batch is as follows:
1/2 gal organic cider
1/2 gal tea of holy basil, gotu kola and mulling spices
5c dextrose
2 tsp yeast nutrient
EC 1118 yeast (ferments dry in 6 days)

If you're going to continue doing gruit ciders I may be able to share some of the sweet gale...

 

[Zymomancer]

I'm using S-04, it seems to do a good job preserving the apple flavour, maybe because it ferments so slowly?

I had never thought of using savoury and didn't know there was a special kind from Newfoundland.

I haven't thought about using myrica gale, I'll see if I can find some before the fall, otherwise I might take up that offer. As it is, I should probably pick some of the herbs I'm using and dry them for winter brewing. If for some reason I don't like the gruit cider in the long run, I might take a step into the beer world and make an extract gruit ale.

Something I've noticed in the sampling is that a dry cider, unlike unhopped and un-herbed beer, doesn't have the residual sweetness that needs to be balanced out by the bittering herbs. Since it's not balancing anything you just get the taste of herbs and malic acid. I think when it comes time to serve it, I'll try adding a little bit of sugar to the glass and see if it works better with a sweet cider. It's not bad how it is, it's just more like an IPA, which completely abandons malt flavours to focus on the hops. I guess a sweet gruit cider / sweet hopped cider is in effect a sort of "apple ale"?

 

[ifso215]

The Mt. Scio Savoury is definitely a unique one... It is unlike the same species grown anywhere else because of the microclimate and soil chemistry of the farm... Definitely worth looking into if not for cooking purposes alone.

Re: Body, one of the best examples of addressing that issue is Sociable Cider in Minneapolis, MN. Their dry cider directly addresses the lack of traditional cider apples available for pressing in North America by fermenting with sorghum (a molasses-like sweetener popular here in the American south) for body and hopping for bitterness to round out the profile. The product is superb if you can get your hands on it.

I am not a chemist and cannot attest to how the sorghum adds to the body regarding its fermentable vs. unfermentable sugars, but I will be playing with it in the near future. I've fermented enough ciders with the addition of dextrose, dehydrated cane juice and table sugar to pick up on how the sorghum affects body when I do eventually use it. I'll keep everyone posted in case it has not been discussed yet. It's going to be a fun ingredient to play with and hopefully we can make some progress with the cider's body using it, allowing other herbal additions to shine.

 

[Zymomancer]

Yeah, keep me posted, you might even want to search around or start a new thread. I've never heard anyone mention sorghum as something that specifically benefits cider.

 

[Swissmtndog]

I do a similar with sage, juniper, lavender and a few other ingredients I can't think of off the top of my head. I boil in though in an asian black tea...again, would have to look at the name and cook down some black strap molasses. I then dry hop with simcoe. It's a hit with beer drinkers. Not so much with fruity or sweet cider afficianados.