Just spent a couple of interesting days at the Batlow Cider Fest (Batlow is an apple growing town across the Snowy Mountains from us... it is at about 1000metres altitude, and some of the orchards have started making craft cider. See batlowciderfest.com.au ).
Mostly they are making in the 1000-5000 litres range, don't try to compete with the "big guys" and are keen to encourage the general population to drink craft cider rather than apple juice concentrate, water, sugar, yeast and CO2. The approach has been to graft varieties such as Dabinet, Yarlington Mill, Brown Snout, etc onto old Pink Lady rootstock, then blending while keeping Pink Lady as the main source of juice. Mostly sales are "cellar door" with some supplying to liquor stores in Canberra about 200km away. Any further afield and freight becomes a problem, given the small volumes. Anyhow, I digress.
At a "taste and learn" session a few of the orchards had brought along some hopped cider. One school of thought was to naturally ferment with hopps in the brew right from the start, the other approach was to ferment the cider as usual and wait until Spring when the temperature gets over 18 degrees C then add dry hops for about two weeks before bottling. The ratio was about 6 grams of dry hops per litre of cider. In any case, both types tasted quite good. Does this ratio sound about right? I am not sure if my notes are all that good after a hard afternoon of "tasting".
So now the question... does anyone have a faourite recipe for hopped cider (fresh or dry) that they would like to share. I have a gallon of "experimental" WLP775 that is about two months or so away from bottling. It has just been transferred to secondary at 1.015, so it might be opportune to split into straight and hopped when I bottle.
Mostly they are making in the 1000-5000 litres range, don't try to compete with the "big guys" and are keen to encourage the general population to drink craft cider rather than apple juice concentrate, water, sugar, yeast and CO2. The approach has been to graft varieties such as Dabinet, Yarlington Mill, Brown Snout, etc onto old Pink Lady rootstock, then blending while keeping Pink Lady as the main source of juice. Mostly sales are "cellar door" with some supplying to liquor stores in Canberra about 200km away. Any further afield and freight becomes a problem, given the small volumes. Anyhow, I digress.
At a "taste and learn" session a few of the orchards had brought along some hopped cider. One school of thought was to naturally ferment with hopps in the brew right from the start, the other approach was to ferment the cider as usual and wait until Spring when the temperature gets over 18 degrees C then add dry hops for about two weeks before bottling. The ratio was about 6 grams of dry hops per litre of cider. In any case, both types tasted quite good. Does this ratio sound about right? I am not sure if my notes are all that good after a hard afternoon of "tasting".
So now the question... does anyone have a faourite recipe for hopped cider (fresh or dry) that they would like to share. I have a gallon of "experimental" WLP775 that is about two months or so away from bottling. It has just been transferred to secondary at 1.015, so it might be opportune to split into straight and hopped when I bottle.
