Taste Testing
Success in home brewing is always measured in the smell, look & taste & after tasting my first cider I can hardly judge its as an elixir of the gods, even when comparing it to white-lighting or "Tramp Juice".
If your struggling to describe the taste I used the beer score sheet below to get a better idea of what I was looking for. After adding the essence to my cider the aroma was amazing, full of hints of raspberry & apple. The cider was clear in the bottle but had more sediment built up at the bottom, than I would have liked, an easy remedy during bottling. By keeping the syphon tube higher in the fermenter away from the fines or sediment I could have had a much clearer cider with almost no sediment. Finally the taste, it's not sweet by any means or dry for that point, instead it just lacks the flavour that the smell promises.
Home-brew Solutions
FLAT CIDER: by adding more sugar at the fermenting or conditioning (Bottling) stages, or more apple juice concentrate to the fermenter at the beginning will create more carbonate & bring more 'fizz' to you home-brew. A word of caution when adding more sugar during bottling, too little & you end up with a cider thats as lively as old pop. Too much & you could return home to a scene from Ghostbusters where the Stay Puff Man explodes !
UNSWEETENED:
If similar to my cider & it needs to be sweeter but as we described above the sugar makes it carbonated, then what do we add? Recommendation from posts online & people i've met suggest xylitol, sold at Holland & Barrett. Xylitol is a naturally occurring plant sugar that yeast cannot use, therefore will not be metabolised in to alcohol in the final fermenting processes. You can add this prior to or during the bottling stage. Apparently three tablespoons per gallon gets you a light sweet flavour, but you can add some during the fermenting process & then more during the bottling stage when tasting.
Next Time?
Advice from experts on reddit/r/homebrew suggest using champagne yeast instead of the typically adopted wine yeast. The pro's of champagne yeast are that it makes a traditional dry cider taste with increased alcohol content at the same price but takes longer to brew.
Next Brewing Project.Inc
Raspberry & Apple Cider, Using Champagne Yeast.
This is a new one for me & will be using mainly advice of the internet. some links below for advice.
Ill keep you all updated but awaiting the fruit season to start so I can pick something fresh fruit & freeze until I have enough for a decent batch.
I would like to thank the homebrewing community online, fortunatly we have many people who can describe the process in a detail-oriented way.
Thanks for reading & hit that like button to show me some love.
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