first project complete - questions for project #2

[hbrookie]

We rushed the ginger cider that we made as our first ever homebrew batch into the bottle last night. We're hosting a beer tasting party in a few weeks and really wanted to have two batches complete before that. I was supposed to be out of town for the next week and a half for work, so we bottled last night - only about 36 hours after fermentation stopped. It had started to clear, but we're going to have some pretty heavy sediment in the bottles.

I was going to hurry a peach cider batch into the fermenter this morning before I headed out of town, but when I woke up, I had an email cancelling my trip. Knowing that I've got plenty of time now, I thought I'd take a step back and get a few opinions before I fired this batch up.

I've got 4 lbs of extremely ripe peaches that I skinned, cut up, and froze last fall. I've got a 3 gallon fermenter. From everything I've read, I've probably got about a pound more peaches than I need, but they are frozen in two, two pound bags. I'm thinking 'the more the merrier' at this point.

Obviously there is no where near enough sugar in those peaches to make a cider so sugar water is going to have to be added to the fermenter. I see a lot of people using table sugar, and a lot of people using corn sugar (dextrose). For this purpose, is there any real difference?

Also, there's not a lot of citric acid in peaches (and none in sugar water). Should I throw in a gallon of cheap apple juice to help the flavors pop? or is there enough from the peaches?

Has anyone ever thrown any molasses into a peach cider? I've got an unopened jar here that hasn't been touched in two years. I've got this idea of what I would like it to taste like if I added some molasses to it, but I truly don't know what it would do once the yeast got hold of it.

 

[Pickled_Pepper]

I would throw in the gallon of apple juice. I just finished up a batch of peach/apple and having the apple in there really seemed to make it more complex.

As for table sugar, I get a musty aroma and flavor from white table sugar. I would vote for dextrose, but I think any sugar should work fine. The wine industry uses table sugar. They mostly use it for backsweetening, not raising gravity though. Then again, there are a lot of recipes that use table sugar for boosting gravity. (did I make that confusing enough?)

I've never used molasses, but I would think you might want to go easy on it. It's a pretty strong flavor and might dominate too much if there's a lot in there.

 

[Big_Jim2289]

My apple/peach cider is just over the one week mark in fermentation. I used 4 gallons of apple juice and one gallon of peach nectar however. I use table sugar and my ciders come out just fine (or to my taste anyway). I planned on back sweetening it a bit with some white grape/peach concentrate to make the peach flavor a bit more noticeable if it wasn't when I gave it a taste test.