How Do I Make A Low Alc Low Carb Cider

[hirns]

Well I've been charged by the wife to make a mid strength 3.5% low carb dry cider. Now with a blackrock kit it would be too easy, halve the fermentables and either use dry enzyme or choose a particular yeast. However, I've been making the wife's cider with straight apple/pear Berry juice with selected yeast etc. Without watering down the juice or cutting the finished product how can I make it both low carb and low alc?



Hirns :icon_cheers:

 

[pk.sax]

if u kegged, u could just brew half volume and then dilute with juice in to keg and keep it cold to prevent refermentation.

fails on the no cutting/low carb thing tho....

 

[seamad]

If kegging can stop fermentation early by chilling and kegging. Cant have low carb at same time though.

 

[hirns]

PF if adding juice then it is know longer low carb, only low alc. Thought of cordials etc but it will still won't be dry or low carb. This has me stumped at the moment.

Seamad beat me!

 

[pk.sax]

I've got it!!!

brew cider as normal. Then distill the alcohol off (boil off @ 72C--say 80C) from half of it. This will harm the flavour but then add it back to the other half.

Well, actually... half isn't correct, alcohol can only be boiled off to a certain extent, you'll need to work out the proportion to be boiled off to get the desired results.

 

[ekul]

I imagine that a home made apple cider made from juice is going to be pretty low carb. Its also going to be dry (which is why i imagine its low carb) but without diluting the juice there's no way to make it 3.5% because if you stop the fermentation midway to achieve the low alco you're going to end up with a 'high' carb and sweet apple cider.

Because you can't change the concentration of the sugar in the juice without adding water there's no way to achieve what you want to achieve.

However if you don't mind diluting i would add water to store bought juice till you have an OG of 1027.This will yield a cider that is low carb, low alc and dry as dry can get!

Good luck mate

PF if adding juice then it is know longer low carb, only low alc. Thought of cordials etc but it will still won't be dry or low carb. This has me stumped at the moment.

Seamad beat me!

 

[pk.sax]

also, I wonder if nearly freezing the juice will cause the sugars to start precipitating out to a degree. Sort of freeze distillation, but you use the thawed ice part to dilute the fermented cider. Not as bland as diluting with water... hopefully. I might do a trial sometime.

 

[drsmurto]

A dry cider should contain less carbs than low carb beer as fruit sugars are more fermentable than malt based sugars as a general rule.

Freezing will not result in sugar precipitation.

OG of 1.027, FG 1.000 gives you 3.5%.

The simplest way would be do buy preservative free juice, mix it with water till you hit your target FG and ferment.

Will be dry and have less flavour than regular cider.

The other option is to brew the cider as per normal and dilute it with soda water. Less hassle.