Fall 2012's Pumpkin Apple Hard Cider: when God gives you apples and maybe pumpkins

Fall of 2012 was an odd harvest because of the odd weather for heirloom apples up in Red Hook, NY, where growers take the time and effort to grow varieties that are particularly well suited for Cider (Hard cider). That is, higher acid varieties, sour to the taste, but also higher in fermentation sugars, the stuff that feeds yeasts and kicks off the kick and carbonation (when bottled) in Hard cider.  Many of these varieties were wiped out with prohibition, in favor of sweet tasting, low acid varieties you'll find in place of previous generation's sugar blast of choice Coca Cola, in Juice boxes of children. 

These are apples that give Cider a more rich, fuller flavor, as grapes do versus making wine of pure cane or beat sugar.

Some varieties came early and blew out fast, narrowing choices for Hard cider makers who did not plan if not check with orchards accordingly. That's me. And so this year's batch began with several pounds of the high acid, heirlooms left, including Pippin, Esopus Spitzenburg, Russerts, and few others including a crab apple variety.  These higher sugar, higher fermentation varieties made for an extraordinary, bright, full bodied batch, using the voracious sugar gobbling Notthingham Dry Ale yeast, which makes a truly awesome, slightly sour, crazily carbonated fall option.

This first photo is last years Hard Cider ready to drink in just 2 weeks.  While it was good, but kind of thin and more hollow flavored compared to this year's batch, with the fancy apples.

This year, I also took a portion of the batch and added roasted canned pumpin to the wort/must, as well as cooked can caramelized fresh pumpkin to see how the Notthingham would devour the fermentables and also what it would leave behind for flavor profiles. 

The result was sort of dry, a kind of swede mouth feel, without a lot of pumpkin flavor before the addition of spices (the classics for Apple and Pumpkin pies: clove, allspice, cinnamon, etc,).  I sweetened a few bottles back with honey, and the result was happy for those who prefer sweet to dry.  All in all, good stuff, it's been great to wash back the other white meats, pork products, from sausages to chops.

This is this year's batch, which carbonated like a Belgian ale in the bottle. 

I bought a lot of pumpkin, and ended up making a batch of Pumpkin Ale along side the Ciders to see if I could match or out do the growing variety of pumpkin ales in bars each year, this time of year. 

A lot of brewers believe it comes down to the spices, and not the actual pumpkin, but I used actual pumpkin to see if it would impart a different, better flavor, mouth feel, as it did with the Ciders I infused with pumkin patch.  And it did, but that a story for another post.