Grabbed a sample before I cold crash this one. Apple is best taste I’ve picked up on in my cider. I boiled a gallon down this time , cooled and added the concentrated juice in. Final PH 3.43.
Very cool. Do I detect a red tint in there? Did you use red fleshed apples or black skinned apples, or add cherries? Details – we want details!! 
OG 1.066. that’s 3/4 gallon tart cherry juice . the 5 gal of apple juice is unfiltered press, with a variety of apples. used cote des blancs at around 58-60F. damn tasty even this early…cant wait to let it mature and crush later this fall.
This is what the finished product looks like ( previous batch)
Yeah, that sounds tasty. I’m debating a cherry cider along with a standard one this fall.
How far did you boil down the gallon of cider? I got a weird, astringent note in the batch I used boiled-down cider syrup on that just seemed a bit off to me. I’m wondering if I took it too far. I think I started with 1.5 gallons and ended up with just over a quart of syrup.
So I had 4 qts apple and 1 qt cherry boiled down to roughly 2 qts .
Looks good. Make mine tomorrow. Shooting for the usual - tart with just enough sweetness and tannin to balance.
Presume you add tannin…haven’t done this. What’s your process and reason for this? I have lots to learn regarding cider…
Well I always taste first after fermentation, but I usually like to add some because it adds some structure - IMO ‘apple skin’ character to the cider. Think of it being more like the taste of a bite of an apple as opposed to just fermented juice. But a little goes a long way. A starting point is to mix up to 1/2 tsp of wine tannin (if you feel the cider needs it) into a cup of cider and add at kegging. But what I do to be precise is to pour a pint and add sweetness ( I like apple juice concentrate), acid (malic) and tannin until the balance is where I want and scale up. I add sorbate and campden when I backsweeten.
I’m getting 6 gallons fresh pressed next week from local orchard. Think I will experiment with the tannin additions. I found pure apple syrup and want to back sweeten with it and see how it drives the apple flavor…pricey stuff though.