Ingredients

• 1x Black Rock Apple Cider kit
• 200gm Lactose
• 1kg Glucose (Dextrose)
• 6x Whole, peeled & cored Granny Smith Apples (organic)
• 3x Cinnamon Sticks
• Kit yeast

Brewed & bottled March/April 2007

With the success of the last two brews, Deb was onto me for making stuff that was gluten-free. Enquiring at Grain & Grape about the feasibility of this, I realised I was going to need to progress slowly into the realms of all-grain brewing before I could even imagine playing with the temperamental gluten-free grains (like Amaranth and Sorghum). So I thought I would try my hand at an apple cider. At first, I had grand plans of getting organic apples and juicing them myself; then the reality of time, effort, and expense hit, so I went out and bought the Black Rock cider kit, which is really the only kit on the market that is only concentrated apple juice (and nothing else!)

I mixed the kit into 2litres boiling water. Added Lactose and Glucose. Once dissolved, turned off heat.

I then peeled, and cored the apples and put them in a stocking (boiling the stocking well to eliminate any chance of infection and removing any dyes or other impurities). I put the cinnamon sticks in with them.

I then added cold water to fermenter. Then added wort. Then added stocking.

When the temperature was down to 24-26 degrees, added yeast and stirred vigorously.

• OG: 1.048
• FG: 1.000

ALC/VOL 7.2%

Tasting Notes

This took a long time to go through the secondary fermentation process in the bottle. I was aware that cider took a lot longer than beer to do so, but it was a frustrating wait.

Unfortunately, this didn’t turn out as sweet as I would have like, and there is a residual sourness to it that I’m not keen on. Having said that, Deb and many other women and non-beer drinkers have raved about it. The cinnamon is also lost, whereas in the early days you got a sense of it at the back of your palate.

I plan to do another cider come the warmer weather. Next time, less of the Granny Smiths, more lactose, some maltodextrin, and maybe some Pear/Pear juice and some Honey will make for a sweeter, more flavoursome cider.

For some crazy reason I had George Harrison’s song “Apple Scruffs” going through my head whilst I was brewing this one up. So I figured I would honour Sir George by immortalising his scruffy visage on the label.