6-WAY TC TASTE TEST #1 - juices
There were 4 of us tasting - I'd planned on 6 but 2 decided to have holidays!
The ciders were labelled A to F. All used Young's cider yeast with 1 tsp nutrient and about 3/4tsp tannin.
BASE JUICE:
A,B,C: 500ml Suma AJ concentrate plus 500ml Morrison's Saver AJ (plus enough water to get the total brew up to a gallon)
D,E,F: 4l Prince's AJ (from concentrate)
ADJUNCT JUICE (500ml):
A,D: Morrison's cranberry; B,E: Morrison's blueberry; C,F: Cherrygood
They were NOT all made together, so aging times may have an effect, but even the youngest had 3 months in bottle so differences shouldn't be huge.
.started.bottled
A Feb-01 Feb-22
B Feb-15 Mar-06
C Feb-22 Mar-14
D Apr-10 May-03
E Apr-18 May-10
F May-03 May-20
It took a while, but all four of us ended up with the same conclusions! Hadn't expected that.
Rather than trying to make detailed notes we decided to just rank them in order of preference and mention anything special.
RESULTS
ABC > DEF, ie the Suma ones were preferred to the Prince's.
The Prince's ciders were all a bit sharper - just maybe that's an age thing, they're 2 months younger.
The Suma ciders are also of course 1 or 1.5 % higher ABV, which may be a factor.
And, eventually, majority A>B>C and D>E>F, one participant had C>A>B.
So, cranberry was the favoured adjunct, followed by blueberry and then cherry.
It was pretty close, though, except that everybody liked A the moment they tasted it and so the others were pretty much judged against it.
I still have 2 bottles of each for the other 2 invited judges to try if they can get over here sometime, so there may be an update to the results.
Finally, ALL of them are just a little sharper than I think ideal.
CONCLUSIONS
Suma+cranberry wins, not sure I'd want sweetener in it but taking a little acid out might be good. Only a little though.
And they really should have been brewed together, to make it really fair: serious methodological flaw. Might have to repeat...
NEXT 6 way test will be yeast(cider,ale,wine) * some combination of straight vs sweetened and/or straight vs chalked
Sometime around Christmas...
IN OTHER NEWS...
The meads made in 2011 (Joe's & BlindBen's) are getting very nice now (but not much left),
and the GoldenSyrupNotMead has become very nice indeed.
And we're now out of lemon-infused vodka.
And my headache didn't go until 4pm the following day.
This is what happens when you invite teachers round for the evening...
There were 4 of us tasting - I'd planned on 6 but 2 decided to have holidays!
The ciders were labelled A to F. All used Young's cider yeast with 1 tsp nutrient and about 3/4tsp tannin.
BASE JUICE:
A,B,C: 500ml Suma AJ concentrate plus 500ml Morrison's Saver AJ (plus enough water to get the total brew up to a gallon)
D,E,F: 4l Prince's AJ (from concentrate)
ADJUNCT JUICE (500ml):
A,D: Morrison's cranberry; B,E: Morrison's blueberry; C,F: Cherrygood
They were NOT all made together, so aging times may have an effect, but even the youngest had 3 months in bottle so differences shouldn't be huge.
.started.bottled
A Feb-01 Feb-22
B Feb-15 Mar-06
C Feb-22 Mar-14
D Apr-10 May-03
E Apr-18 May-10
F May-03 May-20
It took a while, but all four of us ended up with the same conclusions! Hadn't expected that.
Rather than trying to make detailed notes we decided to just rank them in order of preference and mention anything special.
RESULTS
ABC > DEF, ie the Suma ones were preferred to the Prince's.
The Prince's ciders were all a bit sharper - just maybe that's an age thing, they're 2 months younger.
The Suma ciders are also of course 1 or 1.5 % higher ABV, which may be a factor.
And, eventually, majority A>B>C and D>E>F, one participant had C>A>B.
So, cranberry was the favoured adjunct, followed by blueberry and then cherry.
It was pretty close, though, except that everybody liked A the moment they tasted it and so the others were pretty much judged against it.
I still have 2 bottles of each for the other 2 invited judges to try if they can get over here sometime, so there may be an update to the results.
Finally, ALL of them are just a little sharper than I think ideal.
CONCLUSIONS
Suma+cranberry wins, not sure I'd want sweetener in it but taking a little acid out might be good. Only a little though.
And they really should have been brewed together, to make it really fair: serious methodological flaw. Might have to repeat...
NEXT 6 way test will be yeast(cider,ale,wine) * some combination of straight vs sweetened and/or straight vs chalked
Sometime around Christmas...
IN OTHER NEWS...
The meads made in 2011 (Joe's & BlindBen's) are getting very nice now (but not much left),
and the GoldenSyrupNotMead has become very nice indeed.
And we're now out of lemon-infused vodka.
And my headache didn't go until 4pm the following day.
This is what happens when you invite teachers round for the evening...
