Craft Hard Cider: Recipes, Tips, and Ideas for Making & Enjoying Hard Cider
Bucket with Film YeastYeast versus Mold: Yeast is the smooth white and mold is the fuzzy green/blackMold on top of Cider If you’ve read many of my articles, you know I often answer questions with “it depends”. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t define practices that are generally helpful and will not create problems when … Continue reading Cider Rules: Oxygen
Transamination: A binding of amino groups to form new aroma compounds. If you are like me, you’re probably wondering how to say it let alone what it is. But, transamination is one of the most important and positive chemical reactions that can happened to your cider. It involves the transfer of an amino group from … Continue reading Cider Words: Transamination
There is art and science involved in making great hard cider. PricklyCider.com is dedicated to helping you understand both the art and the science involved in the process. One idea I have been working to implement is a way to engage more of the expertise and experience from active cider makers around the world. With … Continue reading Cider Poll – The Art of Aging Cider
You may have come across a recipe for making cider that calls for the addition of sugar or maybe you add sugar to your cider. The answer to the question of should you add sugar, varies. Fundamentally, you should never need to add sugar to make cider. In fact, in many countries, the addition of … Continue reading Cider Question: Should I add sugar?
I broke down the equipment used to make hard cider into the following three basic process steps. Fermentation Equipment Aging Equipment Bottling Equipment In this post, I’ll cover the Aging step. You can find PDF files of each step in The Shop. As I did with my other posts, I am taking the view of … Continue reading Cider Equipment: Aging
Is there an ideal amount of time to age cider? Ultimately, there is no one single right answer to the question of how long you should age cider. That is because it depends on the cider and the conditions under which it will age. The maturation or aging of cider, like wine, will allow it … Continue reading Cider Question: How long should you age cider?
As you relax on your patio enjoying one of your home crafted ciders, have you ever started pondering what really creates it. The taste and ultimately, the quality is determined by the numerous compounds found in your cider. These can include esters, fusel alcohols, acids, and a multitude of others. It’s these compounds that define … Continue reading The Essence of Cider
Have you ever heard of a mistelle? I hadn’t until I was doing some research on pommeau, which is a drink made by blending calvados and apple juice. Calvados is apple brandy, also called applejack in the United States. It is basically cider that has been distilled into a spirit or liquor. If you look … Continue reading Cider Mistelle: A Method for Unique Ciders
Maturation: The time needed to make a cider ready to drink. Maturation is defined as the time it takes cider or wine to become ready to drink. I like to broaden that definition to mean the time a cider is stored without preservatives after primary fermentation finishes. I also often call this aging. You can … Continue reading Cider Words: Maturation
Yeast Derivative Products (YDPs) can aid with fermentation by providing nitrogen and nutrients and with clarity by binding with colloidal compounds. But recent research has been focusing on how they can impact aroma. Remember that YDPs are just inactivated yeast developed to provide specific reactionary compounds. YDPs are made by using heat, enzymes, or even … Continue reading Yeast Derivative Products (YDPs) & Aroma
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