New cider recipe. Thoughts?

[H0U5ECAT]

Thinking about laying a new brew and this has come accross my mind.
Winter is coming and the flavour in mind is an apple cinnamon cider.
1kg iron wood honey, has a nice woody taste and deep aroma.
20 ltrs golden valley apple juice (wooies is clearing out 3ltr bottles for $2 ea. Bargain!)
100 grams ground cinnamon
1 x cinnamon stick
300 grams dex
Yeast starter and wine yeast.
Stavia to sweeten.

Ferment at 12° with secondary over three months.

I want to get a really clear cider with this, should i irish moss/wirflock?

Anyone done anything similar?

 

[Airgead]

That's a huge amount of cinnamon...

I'd be adding that in the secondary, one stick at a time. Leave a week between additions and taste. You want to stop when is just under where you want it to be. It will intensify with adding.

It's very easy to overdo.

 

[talco92]

I agree with Airgead, sounds like a LOT of cinnamon. It's important to think about the yeast. I have no idea what kind of secondary metabolites are in cinnamon, but considering it is used in a lot of natural remedies I'd be careful about adding that much re: killing your yeast. Adding post-fermentation is a better idea.

Another thing is that apple juice has an SG around 1.050 , and will ferment dry (1.000), giving ABV of 6.3% or something like that. Add to that the fact that you're using a wine yeast and it has the potential to have a very winey flavour and mouthfeel. Now consider that you're adding 1kg honey and 0.3kg dextrose, and you're basically making wine... Consider using less juice and no dextrose. You can substitute the juice you're not using for some honey and water, and this will give it some body. I suggest making a scaled-down mixture (100mL total maybe) and checking the SG of that. Keep track of mL's and grams of things added, you can get a good idea of the ratio needed for a 20L brew. Shouldn't take long to do.

Another thing that you might want to consider is that cider apples have a lot of tannin and acid, but A.J is made from table apples (high sugar, low tannin and acid). You can try to add some tannin by steeping 3 black tea bags in 500ml boiled water till you get a strong brew, and substituting some water/juice in your recipe for this mixture (to taste). Lemon juice can be used to add some acidity (not sure how much for a 20L brew, maybe 2-3 lemons?) and I've also heard of citric acid crystals being used, but be careful as I imagine it's easy to overdo with the crystals.

About the clarity of the cider, you're not boiling the AJ so irish moss/whirfloc won't work (they are added during the boil). Not sure but I don't think the protein content of AJ is high at all, so clarity shouldn't be much of an issue. You could always cold crash the fermenter before bottling.

The yeast may also need some nutrients (commercial yeast nutrient if you have, but people also get good results using chopped up raisins and/or boiled/dead brewers or bakers yeast - worth searching the forum for an amount of raisins or yeast to use).

 

[timmi9191]

I've used ground cinnamon and won't use it again. Over powered the flavour and left a dusty after taste.

I've used cinnamon sticks with varying success. Less is more imo. Boil for 10 mins or so in a litre of water and add.

Any honey I would add post fermentation. The wine yeast will strip any flavour away.

Wouldn't bother with the Dex, using a wine yeast is going to dry it out enough. If you want to sweeten, I'd use pear juice in preference to stevia, but what would I know...