Atomic Fireballs

Other Fermentables
1

I love these little candies and have had some great commerical and homebrew ciders/meads that highlighted the fireball taste.

I am planning on making a cider and then adding the atomic fireball candies (after stabilizing) to get that hot cinnamon flavor.  I’m curious if the fireballs add any sweetness to the cider, since it is stabilized and the sugar in them won’t ferment out.  I don’t want to backsweeten first in case they do then it becomes too sweet.

Has anyone tried this before?

I know Gordon Strong has a recipe online that has cinnamon oils, which I may use in the future, but I really want to try this route first.

I also have 5 gallons of wildflower mead fermenting right now that I may pull a gallon off of to run a test batch.

2

http://wiki.homebrewersassociation.org/fireballmead

3

My all time favorite pinball machine!

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4

This is the recipe you were looking for.

5

Well hot damn…I just found my bottle label!  :smiley:

I saw this one…looks like a good recipe.  I think I will try the candy first, at least to impress the not-so-craft beer minded people.

6

I freaking love those!  My favorite as a kid, and likely ruined my teeth early on them.

Sounds great…hot cider with a bobbing Atomic Fireball in it.

The outer coating is the best, as you know…and gets less hot and sweeter as you go.  Maybe you just finish it off after you drink the cider?

Have fun.

7

I tried a guy’s beer once ( maybe a holiday ale?) that had cinnamon oil as the cinnamon component. Not my cup of tea but the oil definitely gave it some heat. I’m pretty sure that cinnamon oil is the “hot” in hot cinnamon. Very concentrated.

8

Chuck Boyce, whose recipe was the basis for the conference mead recipe cited above, started by trying to use just the candies. It took way too much candy to get the level of heat he was looking for, and the extra sugar tasted candy sweet, not honey sweet like he was looking for in a sweet mead. Now he just uses the candy for visual effect at serving.

9

Great info…thanks.  The recipes I’ve seen said to use 10 fireballs per gallon.  Noted on the candy vs. honey sweetness in mead.  Maybe I’ll try a 1 gallon recipe of cider with the fireballs to see how it comes out.  My LHBS sells the cinnamon oils so it will probably be the route I do for meads.