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Hi!

I see reference in people's signatures about cherry cider, but I rarely see any recipes (other an "well it's really apple cider with some cherry juice for color")

I'm looking for a nice cherry-flavored cider (probably with a base of apple juice though) that's has a nice yummy cherry color and flavor to it.

here's what I'm thinking

3 gallon batch

2.5 gallons apple juice
1 lb or so of dextrose or brown sugar
Lavlin D47 or EC-1118

when done fermenting, rack onto 2lbs crushed sweet cherries for ~2 weeks

Thoughts?

your recipes?
 
Well I know I can tell you what not to do..

I made a 5 gallon batch of Apfelwine a couple of months ago. Trader Joe's had cherry juice on sale so I added a half a gallon to the carboy. Gave it a redish color during initial fermentation but after a month and a half the red was gone. No taste of cherries whatsoever. It is a little darker brown than the regular AW but you would only notice that as the brewer.

Someone please throw out a good recipe :mug:
 
Well I know I can tell you what not to do..

I made a 5 gallon batch of Apfelwine a couple of months ago. Trader Joe's had cherry juice on sale so I added a half a gallon to the carboy. Gave it a redish color during initial fermentation but after a month and a half the red was gone. No taste of cherries whatsoever. It is a little darker brown than the regular AW but you would only notice that as the brewer.

Someone please throw out a good recipe :mug:

Thanks for your first post, and welcome! Exactly my point - a lot of the recipes I've seen say "cherry cider" yet when it gets to the tasting is says "no cherry color or flavor"

I challenge the good folks at HBT to come up with a great cherry cider! I'll try the recipe I posted soon....just looking for others.
 
I'd assume that your recipe would work. To make strawberry wine you can rack rhubarb wine over strawberries.
 
whatever became of your cherry cider? i'm interested in ciders (so that my wife has a reason to want me to brew). cider/perry recipes, in general, are very difficult to find. so please let me know what you thought of it and what your recommendations for a 5 gallon batch would be
 
I have used the Juicy-juice cherry from a store, it is apple juice with cherry. Even at high ABV, the cherry taste pulls through. In young wine it lends itself as a slight bitter aftertaste with a cherry flavor but I am sure that would merge better with more then a week of ageing.
 
Some orchards sell Cherry Apple Cider, might be a good start if you can't find any other recipes.
 
PHP:
I currently have 5 gallons of apple-cherry cider that I am getting ready to bottle. Here is what I did:

5 gallons fresh pressed apple juice
1/4 tsp sulfite
rest 24 hours.
Pitch 1 pkg nottingham yeast and ferment for 10 days or so.
Rack onto 10 lbs fresh (frozen) cherries.

As was suggested in a previous thread, I probably cold crashed the cider because it almost immediately cleared after racking onto the frozen cherries.

I waited about 10 days until there was very little color left in the cherries and took them out and discarded them. It's been about a month and the cider is beautiful light pinot noir red color. Definitely taste the sour cherry flavor. I'm probably going to carb and bottle half dry. The other half I might try to backsweeten with some honey, carb and pasteurize. Seehttps://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/. I'll post pics and tasting notes as things develop.
 
1 gal honda brew

1 c light brown sugar
1 cup clover honey
100 percent apple juice
ale yeast [cant remember brand but finishes 8-10 abv]
10-25 rasins

take distilled water heat to 4 cups to simmer add rasins simmer 10 or so mins, until rasins are soft smash with a fork until pastey [dont worry a bit of this will boil off reduce heat to low and dissolve in sugar remove from heat

make yeast starter
pour juice into growler about half full
add mixture in pan to must
and warmed honey [ for the love of all that is holy do NOT boil this, please itt kills the honey in it]
airate
top off take temp, may need to cool
airate again
pitch yeast
airate

rack after 2 weeks or when fermentation slows to about a bubble a minute weeks onto fruit of your choice [i wish i could use bananas, dont you?] my usual is cranberries, lemons and blue berries work too.

prime when bottling and thank me when you swmbo loves it

this brew seems to have a problem with airation so pay attention to it
 
You could always brew a dry apple cider then backsweeten with a cherry juice.
 
Hi!

I see reference in people's signatures about cherry cider, but I rarely see any recipes (other an "well it's really apple cider with some cherry juice for color")

I'm looking for a nice cherry-flavored cider (probably with a base of apple juice though) that's has a nice yummy cherry color and flavor to it.

here's what I'm thinking

3 gallon batch

2.5 gallons apple juice
1 lb or so of dextrose or brown sugar
Lavlin D47 or EC-1118

when done fermenting, rack onto 2lbs crushed sweet cherries for ~2 weeks

Thoughts?

your recipes?

This is a variant on the "Balanced Cider" recipe from Strong Waters by Scott Mansfield. My variant uses half the apple juice he called for. I did this by accident, but it's got a nice cherry flavor.

  • 1/2 gallon apple juice (I used the organic stuff from Whole Foods--includes free 1-gallon carboy!)
  • 1 qt R.W.Knudsen "Just Black Cherry" juice from Whole Foods
  • 1 qt 365 Organic lemonade ("365" is the Whole Foods house brand)
  • 1/4 tsp tannin
  • 1 tsp yeast nutrient

I used White Labs WLP720 Sweet Mead/Wine yeast. Next time I do cider, though, I am going to try Lalvin 71B-1122 because it is supposed to eat some of the malic acid.

My O.G. was 1.061. I bottled at F.G. = 1.005, yielding 7.32% ABV. It has a bit of natural carbonation in it. I did not check the F.G. since bottling.

Tasted harsh when fresh, but a month later had a nice cherry flavor to it that I liked. I'm going open a new bottle monthly (I put it in 12-ounce bottles) to see when it tastes best. The color is a reddish-apple juice color.
 
i have never before made a cider from anything but fresh juice, but i had 5L leftover crappy supermarket apple juice from a dull party, so i figured i would try to make something alcoholic from it. small batch, free juice, i was slightly bored, a good chance to just throw a weird batch together. rather than follow any sort of recipe. i got a box of frozen black cherries (250g) and cooked them quickly in whatever leftover sugars i had around, a tiny bit of leftover dme and some raw palm sugar, to 1.068, strained the cherries off and pressed out whatever juice they were holding, pitched s04. i didn't expect much, but on racking was pleasantly surprised to find that it really has a nice cherry character and an interesting slightly bitter note. and it is deep red, the color of an artificial chestnut-red hair dye that office workers who can't be too outrageous get. 1.002, i guess there's probably a bit of something in the palm sugar that the yeast can't eat. racked onto another box of frozen cherries. going to give it another month or two and then it will need a good few months in the bottle, but i now have high hopes for a bigger batch in the future using real juice and a similar strategy
 
Well I just started this one in 1 gal batches.
1 15oz can Oregon pitted dark sweet cherries in heavy syrup
3 1/2 quarts of apple juice of your choice
3/4 cup of brown sugar
2 tsp Nottingham yeast

Add 2 quarts of apple juice to carboy, purée cherries in a sanitized blender. Add brown sugar to 1 quart of apple juice and shake till dissolved, pitch yeast in sugar and juice mixture. Add puréed cherries to carboy and stir or shake. Once yeast is active add to carboy. Add more juice to top off if needed. Top with air lock and keep it warm.

I did the same recipe in another 1 gallon batch with Hodgson's active dry yeast to see what it will do. I have no clue what it will taste like because this is my first time to do it. Any input would be good to hear on how I could improve it, or what I did wrong.
 
you might find that the cherry flavor goes missing during fermentation. i found that the combination of racking onto cherries for 2 weeks + backsweetening (and therefore priming) with cherry juice ensured that cherry would be prominent in the final cut. i just opened my first one last night and am pleased to announce, yup.
 
Well the batch of nottingham yeast decided it did not want to be contained to my carboy. I had Dante's peak in the laundry room. So now the whole house smells like wonderful cherry booze.
 
you might find that the cherry flavor goes missing during fermentation. i found that the combination of racking onto cherries for 2 weeks + backsweetening (and therefore priming) with cherry juice ensured that cherry would be prominent in the final cut. i just opened my first one last night and am pleased to announce, yup.

For the recipe I mentioned a few posts above, the cherry flavor was quite nice a month after bottling. It has faded since then. If I were to try the cherry cider again, I might try cold-crashing before full fermentation. The sticky about various yeasts mentions that the apple flavor can be fermented out with the final sugars. Maybe this happens with the cherry flavor, as well.
 
Here is mine the one on the left has the Nottingham yeast and the other just bread yeast. I tasted the Nottingham today and it was super sweet with a great cherry kicker, it needs another week before it goes into the secondary.

image-1514008150.jpg
 
I tried experimenting this week with some cherry cider from trader joe's. Used one gallon of cider with 7 oz of sugar and EC-1118. After 2 days it's bubbling nicely.
 
EC1118
4gallons of juice, 2lbs brown sugar, 1lb honey, vanilla extract, a touch of cinnamon, and some black tea. Also: energizer, nutrient, campden tablets, and pectic enzyme. Top off with water and let go for 1.5 months. Rack into keg and back-sweeten with 'just tart cherries', 2 cans of apple juice concentrate, and 1 cup of sugar for the natural carbonation (also pumped it to 10psi after back-sweetening to set the seal and give it an anoxic environment). The little bastard took of running! I caught it at 55psi and had to tune in my spunding valve. It's now in the fridge cold-crashing :D



5gallons of cherry-cider sitting in the fridge,
If I drink it all I'll be living under a bridge
5 gallons of alcohol to feed my liver,
If I drink it all, I'll be floating in the river!
 
Funny this should pop up when I just started a batch. Tecniqually it's a cyser rather than a cider, but, se la vi.

I used 3 gallons of treetop cider, 1 gallon of Pomegranet/cherry juice (the "cherry" juice in the store had all kinds of unpronoucables in it) and 5 lb honey. I was planning on adding in a pound of dried cherries as well, but couldn't find them. I'll probably add in frozen ones in a couple weeks.
 
I was actually trying to make a Dr. Pepper clone, that's still an active project, but I am fermenting some black cherry juice. So far, it's kept both it's cherry flavor and color very well. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f95/dr-pepper-clone-207217/index4.html It is the deeper black cherry flavor though, not the sharp cherry flavor of either sour or sweet cherries. The black cherry juice was dilluted 1:2 juice to water. The color of this stuff in a glass is a nice deep burgundy.

There is no applejuice in this mix, I just used an old 2 quart applejuice bottle as primary for the experimental batch. It's hard to see in the picture, but some of the cherry solids have settled out. That did cause a small amount of color loss from the orginal mixture, but not enough for it to be a problem.

drpepperferment1004batch1bottle.jpg


drpepperferment1004batch1glass.jpg
 
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