This is the cider that I keep on tap pretty much all of the time now. There are a lot of cider recipes out there – but this one’s different. It doesn’t taste like a cider with some hop character – it actually tastes like a pilsner. Almost.
Go watch the companion video for the full brew day, including step-by-step instructions, and a full description of what the cider tastes like. This article covers the trick that makes it work, plus the full recipe for reference.
Most hopped ciders lean into the fruit: they go IPA-style, with fruity American hops, and they’re dry-hopped only. I find that this amplifies the apple instead of providing complexity – so this one goes the other way. It uses German noble hops, a real hop boil, and a yeast that gives the cider actual lager character. The result is close enough to a beer that, in a blind tasting, my friends couldn’t even tell it wasn’t.
How to Get a Real Hop Boil in a Hopped Cider
Every hopped cider recipe that I’ve seen does the same thing: it’s dry hop only. This makes sense: you don’t boil the must at any point when making cider, so there’s no obvious point in the brew day to add a hop boil.
But dry hopping only gives you one dimension of hop character (and it’s mostly hop sweetness and aroma). None of the actual bitterness or bite that you expect in a beer – especially something like a pilsner.
I actually tried boiling the apple juice at one point to force a hop boil…. and that turned out weird. DON’T DO THAT!
What Actually Works
Instead of boiling juice, boil water instead!
Make hop water. Add your hop additions to that boiling water.
And then, at flameout, mix in one can of frozen apple juice concentrate to that boiling-hot hop water…. and now you have hopped apple juice.
This has the added benefit of immediately crash-cooling the temperature down well below the 180°F hop isomerization temperature, which locks in the hop flavor.
The finished cider in this recipe only comes out to about 10 IBUs after everything gets diluted, which might sound low in context of a beer, but in a bone-dry cider (which lacks that malt backbone) it actually works really well.
The Recipe
Fermentables
Hops
Yeast
Boil
Fermentation Pressure Fermentation
• Boil 1 gallon of water for 45 minutes, regardless of total batch volume. At the end of the boil, add 1 can of frozen juice concentrate directly to the boil, followed by one 2qt bottle of juice. Combine this mixture with the rest of the apple juice in the fermenter and pitch the yeast.
• Kveik yeast ferments fast, but be sure to give it a full month to rest and let the yeast clean up after itself: fermenting apples can create sulfur compounds and it will not taste good right away.
Tasting Notes
The full tasting is in the video, but in summary: it does taste like a cider, but it also might be the most beer-like thing I’ve had that’s not actually a beer.
It’s not sweet or particularly fruity. The apple is subtle, dry, and tart. The hops carry the flavor profile with that typical spicy, bitey character that you expect in a German lager. Hallertau blanc, in particularly, pairs really well with the apple flavor and combines to make it really taste like the apple belongs without making it just another hopped cider.
But the really compelling thing about this recipe? The Lutra kveik yeast, when paired with the apple juice, makes something more lager-y than your typical Lutra-fermented pseudolager. The dryness of the cider and the tartness of the apple creates this crispy texture in your mouth that feels almost like it has that crispness that those pseudolagers lack without a real lager yeast.
It’s dry, it’s crisp, it’s refreshing, and it has real hop bitterness across the full hop flavor spectrum – and it comes in right around 5% ABV. So when I’m craving a pilsner – which is quite often since I live in the south and it’s always so hot – I can just reach for this.
Conclusion
This is one of my favorite recipes I’ve ever come up with, and one of my favorite things I’ve made.
It took quite a few batches to figure out how to make everything work out, but once I got it figured out… oh man is it good.
If you like beer and you’ve never tried something like this…. this is where I’d start. The process is legitimately simple (especially compared to beer), the ingredients are cheap and readily available at the grocery store, and the result is awesome.
Full brew day and the actual tasting are in the video above.
