My love of spicy food has been carrying over into my cider making. One of my favorites from last year was my cider mistelle, Ruby Reaper. It uses Carolina Reaper peppers, which were considered the world’s hottest pepper. I also made a hop and pepper cider called Flamin’ Hops that you can find on my recipe page. This year, I decided to mix blueberries and Carolina Reaper peppers and created Blue Flame. I used an Egremont Russet and pear cider base. The pear should help give it a little residual sweetness. I fermented it with White Labs WLP775 English Cider yeast. After the ferment completed, I added blueberries for a secondary. Once this was complete, I added a concentrated tea of Carolina Reaper peppers and let it age. It’s blue and its hot!
The blueberries add phenolic compounds that are aromatic, flavorful, and healthful. The peppers give it a burn at the end. If you enjoy spicy food, you will enjoy this hard cider. It pair’s well with Mexican or Thai but you could put it with any spicy dish. It is not for the faint of heart. Checkout the recipe for Blue Flame on my hard cider recipe page. Here are some direct links.
PricklyCider.com 