Craft Hard Cider: Recipes, Tips, and Ideas for Making & Enjoying Hard Cider
As I noted in my Mâlus Trivium post about potential alternative yeast for hard cider, there are several I plan to trial for the next season so I thought I would highlight each. One of those is Lachancea thermotolerans. The Lanchancea genus is a relatively newcomer from a classification perspective. In 2003, a new multi-gene … Continue reading Alternative Cider Yeast: Lachancea thermotolerans Overview
Nothing does a better job of showcasing hard cider than food. My wife and I are hopeful that we can soon restart our cider parties. In the meantime, we continue to explore different food and cider pairings. One of my recent favorites was a spicy Thai chicken soup with rice noodles that my wife made. … Continue reading Thai Chicken Soup and Cider
Being able to create a hard cider with some residual sweetness is often referred to as the holy grail of cider. The reason for this is because that sweetness can be used to balance the high acids often found in dessert apples and the tannins found in cider apples. This cider season I set about … Continue reading Experiments in Sweetness: Sweet Hard Cider
Usually, my answer to a question about hard cider is “it depends”. I generally try not to be definitive because there are simply so many unknown factors that being definitive is almost always wrong. However, for this article, I’m going to argue a definitive. The definitive is that you should not use Campden tables in … Continue reading Stop Killing Your Juice: The Argument Against Campden
Sensory Impact of Compounds in Hard Cider Have you ever wondered how the level of certain compounds can impact the sensory perception of others? Okay, we all know I’m an apple geek so stick with me. Hard cider is generally a balance of sweet, sour, astringency, and bitterness. You can add aroma and we can … Continue reading Sensory Impact of Various Compounds in Hard Cider
WARNING - THIS POST WILL MAKE YOU HUNGRY! We don’t eat a lot of red meat but there are a few holidays where it’s the center piece of the meal. Christmas dinner is one of those and it is built around me cooking a bone-in prime rib. How is this related whatsoever to nachos and … Continue reading Nachos & Hard Cider: Burnt Ends
Yeast impact on residual sugar and acid in cider. While the research by M. Lorenzini and associates was done to assess the impact of yeast on volatile compounds in hard cider(1), I found it interesting for another reason. As part of the study, they noted the amount of ethanol each yeast produced and the corresponding … Continue reading Yeast Impact on Sugar and Acids
I’ve talked about the color of hard cider and how the process for making wine can be used as a reference. This is because like wine, cider color can be influenced by the fruit as well as the process. In another post on hard cider color, I explored how to make what I call silver … Continue reading Exploring the Colors of Hard Cider
Fruit ripeness can impact a variety of compounds. Ripeness is usually associated with sweetness so confirming that apple cultivars have higher sugars and lower malic acid as they ripen(1), makes sense. It’s always good when what we think it logical is confirmed by science. However, I found it interesting that when O. Laaksonen and associates … Continue reading The Impact of Fruit Ripeness
We continue to create and pair unique pizzas and hard ciders. Pizza is one of my favorite foods to pair with hard cider and like cider, pizza offers a wide array of flavor combinations. Usually, my pizzas are driven by a unique crust flavor that think up. But, a couple pizzas I matched the crust … Continue reading Pizza and Hard Cider – Part VI
