Last fall I was messing around making a bunch of different ciders, and had the idea of making a Belgian Dubbel Style Cider. I made a four gallon batch, with four pounds of home made candi syrup from this thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/20-lb-sugar-jar-yeast-nutrient-114837/. I used the #5 recipe, and subbed a pound and a half of lactose for white sugar. When I was making the syrup, I steeped a pound of Special B in a quart and a half of water, rinsed it with another quart of 170 degree water and boiled it down to a syrup, so I had kind of a Special B LME. When I was done with both the syrup and the Special B I added cider to both the pots to mix the cider with the sticky stuff, and then poured it into the fermenter, with enough cider to fill a four gallon fermenter to about three and a half gallons. I left a little headspace because with some of my other cider experiments I didn't, and it wasn't pretty.
I added the rehydrated T-58, shook the daylights out of the fermenter to mix everything up, wrapped it in a blanket and let it ferment at whatever temperature it decided to go to. After the fermentation settled down a bit I topped it off with some fresh cider.
I let it sit for a couple months, then transferred to secondary, where it sat for a few more months. I bottled a month and a half ago with a cup of priming sugar, I wanted it carbonated.
Last week my curiosity got the best of me so I put a bottle in the fridge when I got home from work in the morning. In the afternoon after it had a chance to cool down I decided to give it a try.
It poured as black as night, with very little carbonation. With the first sip you got the sense of carbonation on the tongue, along with a nice cider flavor and tartness, which melded into dark fruit, raisin and chocolate, with a nice spicy finish from the yeast. I was pretty impressed, but wanted a second opinion so I took it upstairs to let my wife try it. She didn't want to give the glass back! In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I thought I had better chill another bottle to make sure the first one wasn't a fluke. The second bottle was just as good, so I think I can declare this experiment a success.
I didn't take an OG reading, but it finished at .995, and from the way a half a glass made me feel it is definitely more of a sipper than a quaffer.
The rest of the batch I am going to let sit until the weather cools down. It should make a good after dinner in-front-of-the-fire sipper.
It is kind of time consuming to put a batch of this together, but I will be making another batch this fall.
Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?
I added the rehydrated T-58, shook the daylights out of the fermenter to mix everything up, wrapped it in a blanket and let it ferment at whatever temperature it decided to go to. After the fermentation settled down a bit I topped it off with some fresh cider.
I let it sit for a couple months, then transferred to secondary, where it sat for a few more months. I bottled a month and a half ago with a cup of priming sugar, I wanted it carbonated.
Last week my curiosity got the best of me so I put a bottle in the fridge when I got home from work in the morning. In the afternoon after it had a chance to cool down I decided to give it a try.
It poured as black as night, with very little carbonation. With the first sip you got the sense of carbonation on the tongue, along with a nice cider flavor and tartness, which melded into dark fruit, raisin and chocolate, with a nice spicy finish from the yeast. I was pretty impressed, but wanted a second opinion so I took it upstairs to let my wife try it. She didn't want to give the glass back! In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I thought I had better chill another bottle to make sure the first one wasn't a fluke. The second bottle was just as good, so I think I can declare this experiment a success.
I didn't take an OG reading, but it finished at .995, and from the way a half a glass made me feel it is definitely more of a sipper than a quaffer.
The rest of the batch I am going to let sit until the weather cools down. It should make a good after dinner in-front-of-the-fire sipper.
It is kind of time consuming to put a batch of this together, but I will be making another batch this fall.
Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?