Well I finally cracked open my first bottle of homemade home cider last night and I gotta say I'm a bit disappointed. Initially I was hesitant to even bottle the cider at all. The mulling spice I added early in fermentation seemed to overpower the smell and taste of the cider throughout fermentation. I suppose it was the strong tannins inside the mulling spice that were just unable to get killed by the cider yeast.
I was at least happy that in the final product the mulling spice seemed to mostly clear out. I think the use of brown sugar as a priming solution might've helped a little bit. But still, the end result was very very dry, lacking much flavor and sporting a cloudy, un-appetizing color. Perhaps more yeast was needed...
Anyways onto the next project. I'm doing a Porter/Black IPA with lots of cluster and cascade hops.
