Rosé wines are made by allowing the grape juice to ferment for a short period of time while in contact with red or purple grape skins. For cider, we can also make it using red-fleshed apples but this recipe follows the wine tradition by including the peels from red apples in the fermenter. Fermentation and alcohol will extract the phenolic compounds, including the anthocyanins, found in the peel. You can also freeze, thaw, and microwave the peels to aid in the extraction process. Anthocyanins are a soft tannin that have some astringency but create the color of the apple peel. They will provide the pink hue needed for your rosé cider.
I use Arkansas Black peels with my single variety Mutsu Apple juice. You can use other red apples. Pick fruit with the peel a deep red color if possible. Red Delicious can be a good choice if you do not have access to Arkansas Black peels. You can also double the amount of peels if your peels are not red enough. I use the microwave to extract more of the phenolic compounds but you can simply add them to the fermenter. Alcohol and yeast will extract the phenolic compounds from the peels. If you do not have Mutsu apples, also known as Crispin apples, try something that has a pH in the 3.5-3.6 range or mildly acidic.
I use Pichia kluyveri, strain Y-17228, yeast for this cider. If you are in the U.S., check the yeast page if you want to order some. If it is not available, contact me and I can propagate some for you. If you do not have access to a commercial source for this yeast or are not in the United States, I recommend a wild fermentation. Wild ferments will normally have more non-Saccharomyces strains, like Pichia kluyveri. They will normally not finish with these strains but these will tend to dominate the early stages of the fermentation process. You usually have to inoculate with a non-Saccharomyces strain to ensure it dominates for the entire process but you should still get many of the benefits of non-Saccharomyces yeast.
Note that while I ferment in a Fermonster, I use kegs for aging. This allows me to limit oxygen exposure after fermentation completes. It also offers me greater flexibility for filtering, racking, and bottling. Kegs allow me to easily provide a CO2 blanket on top of the cider, even when I do not fill the entire. This cider generally has a fruity profile that is best drunk younger. I think it is best drunk around 10 weeks after the final racking. If you let it age for many months or even years, you will most likely lose some of the fruitiness and start to see some color precipitate out.
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