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Thursday, January 11, 2018

Ice Cider - Tasting Notes

Last year I embarked on what turned out to be a 6 month processes of making my own Ice Cider.  This is a cider that is 4x concentrated (up to 40 brix which is 40% sugar content) via freezing and then fermented to the low teens ABV (wine strength) which, due to the high starting sugar content, results in a very sweet finished product.  My Ice Cider slowly fermented down to 23 brix from 40 which resulted in a 14.5% ABV cider.

I bottled it back in July 2017 and have been sampling one every month or so.  I'm happy to say that they've all remained perfectly still so far - looks like I dodged the infection bullet.


I only ended up with 20 bottles for all my labors and I'm going through them fairly quickly.  I decided I better get in some tasting notes while I've still got them.

It is truly an extreme beverage and quite interesting to sample (in small quantities).

Tasting Notes:
  • Aroma:
    • Intense apple cider aroma dominates.  Also get a bit of alcohol and what I think is yeast ester which provides a slightly different bit of fruitiness (wine-like maybe)
  • Appearance:
    • Dark gold and very clear.  It is perfectly still.
  • Flavor:
    • Very sweet with a concentrated apple flavor.  Alcohol flavor is mostly hidden.  There is a somewhat sharp flavor in the finish which may be a mix of alcohol and tannin
  • Mouthfeel:
    • Full bodied and sticky sweet.  It has a slight astringency that comes through in finish that cuts through the sweetness.
  • Overall:
    • This is really an amazingly intense beverage.  It tastes exactly like you would expect a 4x concentrated cider would taste like - intense apple and incredible sweetness.  What is nice is that it doesn't taste how a 14.5% ABV beverage might be expected to.  I really like how the bit of sharpness in the finish sort of counters the sweetness - it makes taking the next sip much more enjoyable than I think it would be if it were purely sweet.  Even so, this is a beverage to sip in small quantities.  I've found that 4 oz at a time is more than enough.  I've been taking a week or so to get through a bottle - keeps well in the fridge fortunately

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