Shortly after our fermented beverages class that Scott Mansfield taught, we started our own batch of hard apple cherry cider and ginger beer with rhubarb syrup. We modified the recipes a bit by using sour cherry juice and honey in the cider and adding rhubarb syrup to the ginger beer.
This weekend we tried our first bottles and we were extremely happy with the yummy results! The cider was a beautiful blush color. Sparkling and very crisp, we could taste both apple and cherry. The ginger beer was spicy and refreshing.
This really was as easy as Scott said it would be! Here’s how we did ours.
Cider:
Since this was our first batch we started out small (next time we’re going for the big carboy!)
About 3/4 gallon of Knudson’s apple juice
A little more than 1/2 a 1 qt jar of Knudson’s sour cherry juice
1 teaspoon of ale yeast
1 cup honey
1 cup water
Pour the apple and cherry juice into a carboy, add the yeast, put on the airlock. We let ours sit 3 weeks- about a week or so after the fermentation stopped, we would have bottled sooner but we were out of town and did not have a chance to bottle until we came back.
Right before we bottled, we mixed a cup of honey with a cup of slightly warm water and stirred until the honey dissolved.
Next we poured the honey water into a clean carboy and then racked the cider (to remove the sediment) into that new carboy. Next we immediately bottled the cider and then let it sit in the bottles for another 2 weeks before drinking.
Ginger Beer:
For our ginger beer we followed Scott’s recipe (posted on www.urbanpeasantsf.com), we modified it slightly by substituting a 1/4 cup or so of rhubarb syrup for the corn sugar. We also left out the Jalapeno. It took 6 days for first ferment, 4 weeks before we tried our first bottle.
Rhubarb Syrup
1 cup rhubarb, washed and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups water
Combine the ingredients in a saucepan and stir over high heat and bring to a boil. Once the mixture boils, reduce heat to low and simmer for about 25 minutes until rhubarb is falling apart. Remove from heat and, using a fine mesh strainer, strain and discard rhubarb solids. Store left over syrup in the refrigerator.
We can’t wait to start another batch or two and share it with our friends! Let us know if you have tried any of the recipes from the Ginger Beer and Mead class, we'd love to hear from you and share your results on our blog.
