Barrel Aged Cider

 

Cider certainly has become quite popular in recent years and with the popularity has come many very nice ciders on the market. In my opinion this is all the more reason to make cider at home to share with friends and family and to play around with ways to further explore the complexity and nuances of this great beverage. The questions that you ask about are certainly good things to consider.

Apples contain a fair amount of malic acid and this acid provides tartness to apples and other fruits. In fact, the name malic acid comes from the Latin root “malum,” which is both the root for apple and evil. That opens up some interesting naming ideas! Since ciders, like grape wines, have the tendency, depending on yeast strain and fermentation method, of fermenting out very dry they can become very tart.

The tartness in dry ciders can border on the extreme, especially when the juice blend contains a lot of tart varieties or is from a single, tart variety like Granny Smith. The use of so-called malolactic strains of bacteria, such as Leuconostoc oenos, is a nice way of rounding out these tart ciders. During the malolactic fermentation, often referred to as “ML fermentation” or “MLF” by the cool kids, malic acid is converted to lactic acid. Since lactic acid has a much softer acidity than malic acid, the result of the MLF is a rounder cider. These bacteria also produce diacetyl and ciders and wines that have undergone MLF often have a pronounced buttery nose and silky palate. I personally like the flavors and aromas associated with MLF and believe that the process adds complexity.

OK, so a few pointers. The ML culture does not replace yeast. You will still need to use a winemaking or brewing yeast strain for the primary fermentation. You can add the ML culture to your must along with the yeast, or you can add the ML culture after the primary fermentation has completed. This is a weighty topic and there is a lot of information written about MLF in the wine literature. There are many different types of bacteria that can be used and different strategies on when to add them and how to control the MLF. This is definitely something worth playing with!

Oak aging is another thing worth playing with. Cider is wine and the same basic techniques used to make grape wine can be applied to making cider. I have aged ciders in new American oak barrels and the results have been pretty exciting; almost like low alcohol white wine. I think the thing you need to be careful about is imparting too much oak flavor, and this is especially true if you are using new barrels. Oak spirals can also be used, and one of the benefits to spirals is the ability to reduce the oak area to cider volume ratio. Another way to accomplish the same thing is by blending cider aged in oak with cider aged in glass or stainless steel. This is a matter of taste.

I do like the idea of aging cider in whiskey barrels and think you will be happy with the flavor contribution. One thing to consider is that whiskey barrels have an interior char that makes the wood like a sponge. This is why aging beer or cider in a wet whiskey barrel increases the alcohol content. Wine barrels have a much smoother interior finish and the wood is not charred. Although wine barrels do retain liquid when they are hydrated, the flavor transfer will not be anywhere as intense as when using a whiskey barrel. The barrel flavor itself will also be much different and a wine barrel is likely to primarily impart vanilla and toasted oak flavors, whereas a whiskey barrel, especially a wet whiskey barrel, is going to give these flavors plus others like coconut, leather, tobacco and, of course, whiskey.

The thing about aging cider in a wet barrel is that the process adds alcohol to the cider. Since, in the US, this process is controlled by the alcohol tax regulators most commercial ciders do not use such methods. But making cider at home opens the door to a lot more process freedom. If the primary purpose of the barrel aging is to impart whiskey/bourbon flavors and you are able to use a whiskey barrel, you do not need to wait very long for the flavor transfer to occur. Many excellent whiskey barrel-aged beers spend 4-6 weeks in the barrel prior to packaging. Just to be clear with my basic advice, you should be adding fermented cider to the barrel for aging and top the barrel up as much as possible to minimize the headspace.

And your last cider question is about adding maltiness to the finish. The most direct way of addressing this desire would be to add some wort to your apple juice before fermentation. In fact many ciders on the market contain some fermentables from malt so that they are taxed as beer and not wine. One of the challenges with cidermaking is having some residual sweetness and using wort, especially wort with a fair bit of crystal malt, is one way of boosting the finish gravity of the cider and contributing that maltiness that you seek. As with brewing, you do want to boil the wort to kill bacteria but unlike beer brewing you don’t want to add hops.

Another way of increasing body and making cider that tastes more like apple juice is to stop the fermentation before it comes to completion. Many commercial operations use pasteurization for this, some stop fermentation by rapid chilling and others add preservatives such as sulfites and sorbates. Another method is to ferment the cider dry, back-sweeten with unfermented juice and then pasteurize. If I were looking to make a sweet cider I would want to use pasteurization because that is really the most reliable method.

 

Response by Ashton Lewis.