I was wondering if anyone has tried this. I’m thinking of making a cider with Treetop pure pressed apple juice using the CellarScience “citrus” yeast and the CellarScience “Tropic Thunder” stuff. I did a little research to see if anyone else had tried this, and couldn’t find anyone who had actually tried it, so I thought I would see about it here. Should I back-sweeten? I usually back-sweeten cider with frozen juice concentrate added to the keg, but I was thinking of just adding a tiny bit of sugar (or strong simple syrup) to this one.
I’ve never heard of anyone trying this … but I’m intrigued. If you do it, let us know how it goes.
I doubt it will work since most of the thiol compounds come from malt. Try it and please report back.
This. Thiols seem to be very much malt driven.
As I understood it, grape skins are a major source of thiol-precursers (and an ingredient in Tropic Thunder). The products are supposedly meant for use in wine or beer, but perhaps it will not be sufficiently strong in a non malt-or-grape base? My assumption was that adding thiol-precursers (Tropic Thunder) and a thiolized yeast (Citrus) to a fermentable product would create a thiolized product, regardless of the base. I guess I’ll find out.
I was unaware of Tropic Thunder before your post, but after reading up on it I think it will work pretty well for what you’re planning. I’ve used Phantasm with thiolized yeast in beer, and I’ve generally been disappointed because I was hoping for a huge punch of tropical/thiolized aroma, but it’s much more subtle than what you normally get just from a couple ounces of dry hops. For something like a cider, I think the subtlety will play really nice. You should definitely get some nice tropical aromas out of this.
I’m like you - I normally backsweeten with juice at kegging, but based on my experience with dry-hopped ciders, you might want to lean towards the drier side. At least to my palate, I find those aromas tend to pop a bit more in a dry or off-dry cider than a semi-sweet one.