Sunday, November 24, 2013

Apple, apple, apple

One of the great things about living where we do is that we are right in the middle of apple country.  This means that we not only get a wide variety of right-from-the-tree apples, but we also get freshly pressed unpasteurized cider.

For the first time, we took some of this delicious cider and made hard apple cider.  Fermenting cider is easier than beer, but it also is more susceptible to wild yeast and the like naturally present in the unpasteurized cider.  We're pretty sure our batch got a little bit of wild yeast contamination, but that doesn't mean it went bad.  It still tastes pretty good, in fact.

The smell was a little off, however, so we decided to try adding hops, a novel technique employed by a few national cider companies lately.  This seemed to mask the off odor, and even provide a little more floral character to the nose.

Sam and I are pretty optimistic about this first batch, and we hope to give it another try next year as well.

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