Cinnamon Cranberry Apple Cider

Tonight, I bottled my cinnamon cranberry apple cider. About a year ago, my husband and I had a little dinner party, and I put some apple juice with a little bit of cranberry juice in a crock pot with a few cinnamon sticks, just like my mother used to do. Only thing is, I don’t remember it being this tasty! So this year, I decided to see if I could ferment it. It ended up being 3 parts apple juice from Whole Foods, 1 part “Just Cranberry” juice and a few cinnamon sticks in the crock pot overnight. From there, I cooled it, took out the cinnamon, and added all the goodies to make a cider. No sugar – I decided this one was for casual drinking and didn’t need the added alcohol or masking of the flavor. You can really smell the cranberry, and the taste is on the front end, but I’m a tad worried. There is a bit of an off flavor, and I don’t know if it was from cooking it, or if I have another problem going on. I hope it ages out.

It was also very dry, so I added a bit of Splenda because it won’t start fermenting again. Right now, I’m a little bit shaky when it comes to back sweetening things. I did the same thing with my first batch, but I got to talking to some people who seemed to think I might have over done it. This time, I held back, and maybe that wasn’t such a smart thing to do, either. I really want to use sugar or honey, but I’m nervous about exploding bottles. I need to take some classes.

All in all, I still have another jug of that apple juice, so I wonder if I should restart the batch but don't cook it this time. It might give me a better feel of what cooking does to the flavor.

Actually, before I bottled my cider, I first helped my husband bottle a batch of hefeweizen he had brewing. It was done up as a five gallon batch, in which we then racked into five 1-gallon glass jugs to get it off of the lees to make it easier to bottle. From there, he left one alone and added cherry, raspberry, and mango extracts and some POM pomegranate juice to the last. The mango extract has been with us longer and suffered some summer heat during the move to the new house, so it feel to the bottom. Since he also added POM juice, it was decided that those two should be airlocked again and we would only bottle 3 gallons.