Sweet cider

[nogga]

G'day guys just joined and wrapped to find a chatroom discussing the important things in life. I want to brew a batch of sweet cider for my mrs, but am only able to find kits for dry. Just wondering if anybody has any recipees or tips?

[Chris]

Just make up a dry cider kit (like blackrock) and put in a kilo of lactose. That should do the trick.

[nogga]

Thanks, will let you know result

[pharmaboy]

As a slightly differet option, brew as per normal with kit and sugar, and when you have finished, you will have a dry cider.

To sweeten, get say 4 glasses, fill with the dry cider (preferably coldish - pack in ice maybe?), then add 1/2 teaspoon lactose, 1, 1.5, 2 teasoons - get the drinker of cider to taste test, and say which one they prefer, add lactose to total in the same proportion. Little fiddly but no risk of stuffing it. I just did this with a beligian ale that needed repairing - worked a treat - right balance by taste.
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[Oliver]

Chris,

Just wondering if you've ever brewed a beer or cider with a kilo of lactose? I would have thought that was going a bit overboard. I'd start with 500g and see what you think, then up it from there if necessary.

You don't want it overly sweet.

Or am I just being overly cautious?

Oliver

[Chris]

I did a blackrock cider with 850g. It was too much for me- I like them dry, but the womenfolk loved it. I even had one say that it could have been sweeter. It came out like sweet apple stew!

[nogga]

It would have to be syrup to be too sweet for my wife, the only wine she drinks is orange muscat or spatelexia and she mixes bundy with vanilla coke because it tastes sweeter than normal coke. Anyway I just put down a batch with 1 kg lactose, will post results for anyone else with an overly seet tooth

[moon7442]

That should do the trick.

I think that installing the latest version might help and do not forget to do its updates.

[Tipsy]

That should do the trick.

I think that installing the latest version might help and do not forget to do its updates.

What's all this about

[yardglass]

That should do the trick.

I think that installing the latest version might help and do not forget to do its updates.

What's all this about

hey tips,

nothing new, just another dickhead.

yg

[111222333]

as an aside, i heard that lactose is about 1/6 as sweet as the equivilant amount of cane sugar. has any body been in a situation to find this true?? coz i have a mate who loves sweet cidar (wierd guy, doesnt like beer ) so i did a dry cidar and the other day did the test of adding 1, 1.5 ... teaspoons of sugar to the cidar to see what he fansied. but i didnt have lactose there so i figured i'd use cane sugar and times the amount by 6. now i reallise this was a stupid asumption, so can any body confirm or deny this for me?

ps, if my assumption is correct ill be having to add 1.2kg of lactose to 23Lt, stange chap indeed

[pharmaboy]

lactose has relative sweetness of 40, with sucrose being 100, and maltose being 50 I think.

Bit less than half as sweet -

[kelvin]

Lactose is 16% the sweetness of sucrose, or about 6 times less sweet.

Sugar Sweetness
fructose 173%
sucrose 100%
glucose 74%
maltose 33%
galactose 33%
lactose 16%

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio10 ... drates.htm

[pharmaboy]

LOL! the internet's full of competing info isnt it! The explanation on the info I gave was not as full as that one, ie didnt explain the whether it was a % or not, so I'd go with the 16% as linear perhaps, the 40 maybe a log scale - which makes it reasonably useless I suspect.

For my own info, i just did a taste test with 4 times lactose versus 1 times sucrose, and by taste seemed about on the money(couldnt decide which was sweeter), so closer to 16 than 40. Learn something everyday.

[Chris]

Finally, someone's posted the stats. Thanks kelvin.