Some time ago on here I inquired about using quince in cider. No one, as I recall, had fermented pure quince juice. I got a bunch of free quince from a friend so I went ahead and did it.
The process: I rubbed the fuzz off the quince, washed them, cut them up into pieces and froze the pieces. For several months. I tried getting juice out of fresh quince before. It was basically impossible.
I thawed the quince pieces, pureed them in a food processor and squeezed the juice out with muslin. It was slow, annoying work without much yield. I probably won't do it again. But the quince never got heated and the juice was raw.
I fermented it with Fresco non H2S producing cider yeast (I tried fermenting quince before and got terrible sulphur). The juice tested out with a specific gravity of 1.035. Hit it with a campden tablet and pectic enzyme before fermenting.
Once the ferment was done I let it sit for quite some time. ABV was 4.6%. Then I primed it for seven volumes of CO2 with corn sugar and packaged it in champagne bottles.
I finally tried it last night and the result is... meh. It wasn't nearly as tannic as I thought it would be. That was kind of a disappointment. Quite tart but not as tart as I had anticipated. Mostly clear but it had a little cloudiness. There's a definite but faint scent or taste of quince.
It wasn't as weird and unique as I had hoped but I had feared it would also be awful and undrinkable, which it wasn't.
Unless you can get a lot of quince for cheap and get the juice out easily I wouldn't bother making quince cider. I think it could be useful for blending if you need to add some acidity.
The process: I rubbed the fuzz off the quince, washed them, cut them up into pieces and froze the pieces. For several months. I tried getting juice out of fresh quince before. It was basically impossible.
I thawed the quince pieces, pureed them in a food processor and squeezed the juice out with muslin. It was slow, annoying work without much yield. I probably won't do it again. But the quince never got heated and the juice was raw.
I fermented it with Fresco non H2S producing cider yeast (I tried fermenting quince before and got terrible sulphur). The juice tested out with a specific gravity of 1.035. Hit it with a campden tablet and pectic enzyme before fermenting.
Once the ferment was done I let it sit for quite some time. ABV was 4.6%. Then I primed it for seven volumes of CO2 with corn sugar and packaged it in champagne bottles.
I finally tried it last night and the result is... meh. It wasn't nearly as tannic as I thought it would be. That was kind of a disappointment. Quite tart but not as tart as I had anticipated. Mostly clear but it had a little cloudiness. There's a definite but faint scent or taste of quince.
It wasn't as weird and unique as I had hoped but I had feared it would also be awful and undrinkable, which it wasn't.
Unless you can get a lot of quince for cheap and get the juice out easily I wouldn't bother making quince cider. I think it could be useful for blending if you need to add some acidity.