Pineapple cider

Saw a recipe for pineapple cider in a book and decided to give it a go. Its only a 5 liter batch to try it out :)

I did not have any apple acid at home and the original recipe uses and did not have any liquid belgian ale yeast.. So adjusted it a bit and used sour cooking apples to have natural apple acid and used cider yeast and not the belgian ale yeast.

5 liter water
1 very ripe pineapple
2 cooking apples
400 gram unrefined canesugar
1 cinamon stick
2 cloves
litte bit of sulphite

0.5 pack of cider yeast
1 tsp yeast nutrient
0.5 tsp citric acid
0.5 tsp pectic enzyme
1 cup of strong tea for the tannin.

sanitized my 10 liter fermenting bucket and threw in 400 grams sugar poured over some boiling water and desolved the sugar. Then topped it off to 5 liter with cold water. Gave my fruit a nice bath of clean water and cleaned it well.



cut of the top and bottom of the pineapple and cut the rest of the pineapple in pieces with the skin on and cut the apples and added this to the sugar water. then added the stick of cinamon, 2 cloves and some sulphite (campden) gave it a good stir.





I did not take a reading because it fell on the ground and there is a bit of a crack in it ..

left the mix for 24 hours to sterilize the fruit.

made a yeast starter and a strong cup of thee. added it to the fermenter together with the pectine, citric acid and yeast nutrient..

Its all bubbling nicely





Racked the cider the quick way. I saw a lot of slush at the bottom the dead yeast and small pieces of pineapple so put my bucket up and put my DJ under the tap and just let it run out. I did not want to have the risk of clogging my syphon and was hoping on the extra bit of juice from the fruit. And it turned out very well have a lot of fruit left and a nice full bottle :).







I think that all the acid in the pineapple and the apple started a MLF. It still smells great like a realy overripe pineapple and a hint of apple.. It has a strange almost like powder foam on the cider..

It is the second week in secondary.









so will leave it for an other two weeks and then bottle.. (pics to follow)

That looks really interesting, can't wait for your review on ow it turns out. I love that demijohn too, you could almost use it as a feature in the room, bubbling away on the coffee table.

will post how it turned out.. and planning to make a 20 liter batch this weekend so have some extra for this summer..

Sounds really lovely and Summery. Gorgeous DJ too. I agree with Berk, especially with the lava lamp effect it could be a centrepiece

I hope it will be a nice summer drink i just bought 4 pineapples on the market. They where nice and big so bought 4 and now they need a few days to get nice and ripe.



It would look nice to have a lava brew to look at :).. I have multiple of these DJ`s have 2x 5l and 1x 10l and 2x 25l. the bigger ones are dark brown glass.. Bought them last year on a flea market and I mainly use them for second fermentation. It would be nice to do it in one of these bottles but try and get out the fruit at the end of the fermentation.. So use a bucket for the first fermentation and rack them in one of these bottles and leave it for a while :).

Sounds pretty interesting, I'll have a few free demi's soon...

Hope it turns out well!

bottled my pineapple cider yesterday and primed it.. will leave it for a few days and then have a little taste :).



This was only the 5 liter batch, still have 2 waterbottles that have to age for some weeks :).

Why did you not crush and press the fruit?
It would have given a far greater yield!

I folowed the recipe that was in a book.. and dont have a juicer at home and removing the skin would give some losses too. This was just easy :p. This was also a smal 1 gal batch to test and adjust the recipe. And before i even tasted it i made 10 gal batch that is in secondary now.

got the same oxidation in the bottles but 1 of the 20l batches is still good. It has been standing for a while in secondary and will have to free up some time to get some bottles clean and bottle the stuff.

I have done 3 different batches and 1 survived it all. I got two infections/oxidations but i found out that after racking to secondary the fermentation was completly done.. there was no airlock movement after racking. Normally i see one bulb filling up and get one or two bubbles but two of the 3 batches did not have this at all. So i think its the oxidation of the pineapple.. But now fingers crossed for the last good batch and see how that turns out :).

If the brew is good enough to make again i would probably bottle the cider after fermenting..