Craft Hard Cider: Recipes, Tips, and Ideas for Making & Enjoying Hard Cider
If you are American or grew up in the US, you learned that cider doesn’t mean an alcoholic beverage. Cider meant this cold cloudy drink you would get with doughnuts when visiting an orchard or farm stand. It seem mystical or at least in your memory it is. There must be a special recipe for … Continue reading Making “American Cider” (a.k.a Apple Juice)
If I asked you to define the color that hard cider should be, what would answer? I’m not talking about an adjunct hard cider, but a tradional hard cider made from apples or pears. Would you tell me it should be a dark amber? Should it be a golden hue? What about a yellow so … Continue reading The Color of Cider
When you pick apples in Southern Arizona, whether you sweat or not isn’t often a choice. Even at cooler elevations over 5000 feet, the sun can be brutal and I often work up a good sweat gathering apples for my hard ciders. Believe it or not, apples can also sweat or at least they lose … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #25: To Sweat or Not to Sweat
There is a saying in many English speaking countries that summed up my weekend apple picking experience. That saying is “like a kid in a candy store”. This year, I have been searching southern Arizona for new and unique apples. It has taken me to several new orchards and so far, I have found 6 … Continue reading A Day at the Orchard: Apple Paradise
I’ve discussed in my post on how to make sweet hard cider the use of non-fermentable sweeteners like stevia and erythritol. I generally prefer drier hard cider, but I also enjoy balance. That means if a cider has a lot of acid, having a little residual sugar can help balance it. Tannins and their bitter … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #24: Non-Fermentable Sweeteners
It’s August and that means it’s time for our annual cider tour to Phoenix. Usually, that involves a lunch stop at Phoenix’s only cidery, Cider Corp, to sample their latest creations while getting a bite to eat from a food truck parked out front or their pizza oven. Face masks and social distancing changed that … Continue reading Summer Cider Tour
It’s a sad day when an apple or pear tree dies. I visited Angle Orchard just outside of Safford, Arizona, recently and was introduced to one of the matriarchs of the original orchard that was planted in 1922. She is an Arkansas Black apple tree. An heirloom apple variety of the south that dates back … Continue reading A Day at the Orchard: Old Apple Trees Never Die
This is the first year I have harvested my yeast for reuse. Since I splurged on some liquid yeast from White Labs and Omega, I thought it would be an interesting experiment. I also have an idea about trying to evolve a yeast using selective pressure through bottom cropping of early attenuating colonies. This also … Continue reading Hard Cider Tip #23: Reusing Yeast
I warned you that we really liked sourdough pizza and hard cider. In my last pizza post, I mention some expanded crust varieties that I was planning to try. Well, we tried them. How do crusts like chocolate or basil sound? These all four pizzas in this post have augmented crusts. They also made us … Continue reading Pizza and Hard Cider – Part III
Sunrise Cider: Apricot and Apple There is an apricot tree at the apple orchard I frequent and it normally produces a huge crop of apricots. You can see where this is going. Sunrise Cider combines acidic culinary apples with fresh apricots. In my book, The Art & Science of Cider, I provided this cider recipe … Continue reading Making Sunrise Cider
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