Fermented Pear Cinnamon Cider

To anyone following the blog, I'm hopefully "back" at it for awhile. I may still be off gluten, but I have some cider homebrewing tales to tell.

While on a particular homebrewing forum, someone mentioned that Trader Joes had just released a new cider in the juice isle, and that it sounded like it could be something worth fermenting. It was called "Pear Cinnamon Cider". Often, fermented pear cider is called "Perry", and is fairly sweet with a strong taste of pears.

With that in mind, I took a 1 gallon jug of the stuff, put it into a glass fermenter, tossed some yeast in and called it a day. 4 weeks later, I took a small water/honey solution and "Backsweetened" it. Backsweetening is necessary in fermented ciders because unlike with the malt in beer, almost all of the sugars in juice are fermentable, so the resulting solution is almost always super-dry. I bottled this backsweetened concoction. and 3 days later gave it a taste.

Firstly, it has decent carbonation and a very mild aroma. It has a great color that cleared up from fermentation. My first impression of the taste was "Whoa, that is fairly tasteless". My wife mentioned that it was "Sort of like a Miller Lite of cider". I consider that to NOT be a compliment. She was right. It was light and flavorless. My bet would be that I would have to backsweeten the next batch with ACTUAL pear juice to make it more of a traditional Perry.

I give my own Perry a C+. It was drinkable, but very bland.

Meh, that's what experiments are for! Next up, my adventures with my kegerator.

-Bo