Last night Heidi transferred the mapple syder to a second big mouth bubbler last night and added the potassium sorbate and campden tablets. The final gravity came out to 1.006. Normally we’d add them directly to the primary fermenter, but we’re trying out a pumpkin cider that I wanted to pitch directly onto the yeast cake.
Heidi wasn’t happy with the relatively low level of maple flavor that came through on this one, and it seemed to have a little more cinnamon than we were expecting as well, so we ended up trying a variety of different flavorings before kegging it. All in all, we ended up adding the remainder of the 32oz container of maple syrup, one 12oz can of apple juice concentrate, then a 1/2 cup of light brown sugar, 2.25oz of pecan whiskey, 1 tsp of double strength pure vanilla extract, and finally, 3 tsp of Jim Beam Black bourbon to the 4.5 gallons of cider.
Since we ended up adding such a hodgepodge of flavorings and the maple flavor wasn’t quite where we were hoping, we’ve decided to rename this one to Frankencider.
It’s currently all kegged and purged with CO2, and is cooling off in the old fermentation freezer before we can force carbonate it later this week or next.
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