I made another attempt at a cider. I followed one of the recipes from the cider seminar at the AHA conference," Bourbon Oaked Cider".
After letting it ferment out (at this point it tasted pretty good) I transferred it to a secondary and added the bourbon soaked oak chips for two weeks.
After the two weeks I added camden tablets and potassium sorbate waited 24 hours and transferred to a keg. I had a taste and it pretty much tasted like apple juice with little flavor and no bite. It tasted better before adding the oak, and the camden/potassium sorbate, and now it doesn’t need any backsweeting.
My question are. Did adding the camden/potassium sorbate change the flavor, and would adding some acid blend and wine tannins to the keg help give it a bit more pop? Or does that stuff need to be added prefermentation?
I can taste sorbate and avoid it whenever possible. But it’s hard to back sweeten without it. You can try adding acid and/or tannin. Experiment on a small scale first.
Not sure about the Bourbon-soaked oak but I enjoy a little French oak in my cider.
Is it carbonated? That may be all it needs.
If you oaked it you probably picked up some tannins there. Acid may help. Taste it in a small sample first and scale up from there. I also agree that carbonation can help.
It’s amazing how much a little acid will punch up the flavor. Try a little of several different kinds, citric, malic, ascorbic, acid blend, and see which one does the trick. They had a nice bjcp seminar on this at the NHC in Mpls.
Acid can definitely help and can be added now. I wouldn’t bother with tannins, you got some from the oak and the powdered forms available in homebrew stores won’t work the way you hope. They also tend to require aging. Acid and sugar balance each other out, so you might want to add some sugar after adding acid.