My attempt at a Belgian white cider

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Sleepy_D

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I’m making this post now to document how this goes. I’ve been wanting to make something like woodchucks Belgian white. This is what I started today:

5 gallons Kirkland apple juice
5 tsp yeast nutrient
T-58 yeast

to spice it I took 36 oz water and brought it to a boil. To that I added 0.75 oz dried sweet orange peel and 0.75 oz freshly crushed Indian coriander. Boiled it for 5 minutes. Removed from heat and added 2 chamomile tea bags (about 3 grams of chamomile flower total). Let it sit in the hot water for about10 minutes and then put it in my sink where I had an ice bath waiting. Cooled it for a little over 10 minutes and added it to the fermenter (filtering out the spices in the process). Also added one frozen apple juice concentrate to make up for the dilution from the 36 oz of water.

pitched yeast at about 60 degrees and I’m going to do my best to keep it under 70 for at least 3 days.

OG 1.062
 
Did you taste the infusion before pichting it into cider?
I wonder how would be the fruit flavour, astringency, sweetness,...
 
Did you taste the infusion before pichting it into cider?
I wonder how would be the fruit flavour, astringency, sweetness,...
I did not, I looked up a lot of witbier recipies and picked amounts a little less than average. Since the spice infusion was concentrated into 1/10th of the final volume i expected it to taste so strong that I wouldn’t be able to get much from it. I did give everything a good sniff and it smelled great!
 
I think that it needs 5-10 pounds of sugar to bring up the ABV, add some residual sweetness, and keep it from being super dry.
I was planning on backsweetening it a little bit. The original one from woodchuck that gave me the idea is 5.5% so that’s pretty much just juice in my experience.
 
Quick update. Kegged this cider last Saturday. When I kegged it, I thought it tasted pretty good but I thought it was mostly flavor contributions from the yeast that I was tasting. I couldn’t pick out any specific flavor or aroma from the spices I added. Last night I made another strong tea with 0.5 oz Indian coriander, 0.2 oz sweet orange peel, and 1 chamomile tea bag (should be about 1.5 grams), filtered out the spices, and added that tea to the keg. Going to try it again tonight. At the current point, next time I try this I think I will go the tincture route.

Also it finished at 1.008 and didn’t need sweetening for my tastes, sort of a nice semi-dry similar to beer which I’m emulating
 
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