Other cider ideas?

Cider
1

I was driving south for Thanksgiving and came across a place selling peach cider by the gallon. After some consideration and wondering if hard peach cider would be any good, I passed up the opportunity.

My first batch of apple cider came out pretty rough, but I’m anxious to give apple or any other fruit another try.

So what other juice(s) has anyone tried? I’m looking for suggestions!

2

I haven’t tried fermenting peach juice yet, although there are some who swear by their peach brandy and such. Not sure if it needs to be distilled, or if the peach is added later in the game, or what. If I was to try making a peach wine, I think I would want it extra sweet, so I’d plan on adding a whole lot of lactose or something to keep the sweetness level up. Otherwise just fermenting the straight juice will likely taste like very tart, dry, peach flavored swill.

3

Last year I did a 6 gallons of peach wine (which I backsweetened slightly) and 6 gallons of peach mead to give as guest gifts at my daughter’s wedding. Both were well received and quite tasty.

I didn’t get around to scoring any fine Calhoun County, IL peaches this year to repeat the process, but would recommend peach as a very fermentable fruit.

4

I make peach wine quite often and it turns out well. Most people like it backsweetened to around 1.020. Easy enough with a wine to stabilize and backsweeten with sugar.

If you like cider you might as well try a Perry as well. I have made it several times and they turn out well. Bartlett, Bosc, Packham, Triumph, Seckel, or Clapp Favorite are all good pears to use.

As far as wines goes though the sky is the limit! I’ve tried to make wine from all kinds of things.

5

Hmmm, never tried wine. Sounds like if it’s fruit juice and fermentable, wine can be made from it.

6

I just started a Pear cider using two cans of Harvest Vitners fruit base & 3.5 gallons of water. They have other fruit bases:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/cata ... 7s+Harvest
7

We went to an apple orchard a few weeks ago that had a hard peach cider. Fermented with champagne yeast and then backsweetened. It was lightly carbonated and about 6% ABV. This stuff was REALLY freeakin good, planning on making up a batch this fall/winter.
Cheers.