Hopped Cider

I'm going to celebrate hops for a moment.

*sip*

Ahh, hops!

There's a definite lack of hoppy gluten free beers. Sure most gluten free brewers use hops in their beer. But as you walk through the beer aisle you see brews like "Hop Head" and "Hop Stoopid", you start to feel like you're missing out. Your section is over there off to the side. Three beers to choose from, never on sale, never different, never distinct. But your happy because you're craving beer and you have an unfortunate circumstance that requires you drink special beer. You're special.

Last November I was at the Ballard Farmer's Market and saw that Rockridge Orchards made a hopped cider. I bought a bottle. I was a little worried it'd be too sweet but it wasn't. The hops were faint but they were there. It's really good stuff.

Washington is the number one producer of hops and apples in the United States, so when you live here, these two things should be combined...often.

So when the brew store was out of sorghum malt, I thought I'd give hopped cider a try. I bought some Hallertauer Hops, two cinnamon sticks, gluten free champagne yeast, and some pectic enzyme.

I don't own a cider press but I've had a lot of luck in the past just using a food processor. To do this, you'll need at least 20 pounds of apples. Core the apples, boil them down, let them cool, run through a food processor, boil again with about a gallon of water, and then run through a strainer. This is time consuming but, cheaper than renting or buying a cider press.

But this time, I didn't have to use a food processor. It was December and cider was on sale. I bought five gallons of Columbia Gorge Organic Cider. When you buy cider, the key is to make sure the ingredients are just apples. Some people think pasteurization ruins the flavor of your cider. I have no idea if this it true or not. The cider I used was flash pasteurized and it tasted great.

So I did boil the cider for about 15 minutes with 1 oz of hops. I added four cups of sugar to the boiling cider, let it cool to about 100 degrees fahrenheit, then funneled it into a sterilized carboy. I added 2 cinnamon sticks and about a tablespoon of pectic enzyme at this point. Then I pitched the yeast.

The cider took about two weeks to become bottle ready. I boiled one cup of plain sugar with two cups of water and added that to mixture so it would be come carbonated in the bottle (bottle conditioning).

The cider turned out great. It's not as dry as I had hoped but that's not to say it isn't dry. Much like Rockridge Orchard's hopped cider, this has a faint hoppy flavor. Next time I think I'll try using the whole two ounces of hops. Maybe one ounce of hops in the wort and one ounce dry hopped.