This one trick will add MAJOR FLAVOR to your next cider!

There's many ways to flavor your cider. From fresh fruit to frozen, extracts to even using some more unique spices and herbs. But one way that I've never added flavor was through using dried fruit in my cider. Today I wanted to do some messing around and see what kind of flavors we can get from adding different kinds of dried fruit to a cider. Does air dried work better than freeze dried? What kind of flavor extraction can we get from these? And what kind of things do you have to consider when adding fruit to a cider? Let's find out. My plan was to make a kiwi cider. I love a good ripe kiwi and thought it's flavor would marry nicely with the apple flavor. But I knew adding in fresh kiwi wouldn't be the best way. They are a majority water and while I do love them, I wouldn't say they're the most bursting with flavor fruit out there. But recently I got an air fryer and noticed that it had a dehydrate function and an idea sparked. Could I make my own dried fruit and add it to a cider? As you probably know dried fruit tends to be a lot sweeter in flavor. The fruit has all that water pulled out leaving behind pure flavor. And the added benefit of doing it myself is that I can be sure that the fruit has no unnecessary preservatives that can mess with the fermentation. We already know to look out for sulfites, sorbates, and benzoates in the apple juice we use as they can inhibit yeast growth. But store bought dried fruits can also have another preservative in the form of sulfur dioxide which can potentially affect yeast growth but can also add a sulfur aroma to your cider which can best be described as rhino farts. It's not a guarantee that it'll ruin your cider but probably best practice to avoid added sulfur if possible. So it was settled. I'll dry my own kiwi. I headed to the store, picked up a gallon of apple juice, just using moths today for this experiment, and then grabbed 6 kiwis. It's a great time since kiwis are in season so I found them for a good price. I will say if they have yellow kiwis, grab those. They're much sweeter in my opinion. Side note I also recently had a red kiwi, I never even heard of that, and it was phenomenal. Shout out to my kiwi squad. Back home I peeled the kiwis and then chopped them a bit to help with the dehydration. I ended up doing some slices, which in the end I think dried faster but they also took up more space in the air fryer. I then neatly placed them in the air fryer in one layer and then hit dehydrate, which for my air fryer the settings were 135 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 hours, and I ended up doing two cycles to get them as dehydrated as possible. The air fryer works great for this because it can keep things warm and cycle the air to help speed up the dehydration process. Also I gotta say having an air fryer has really changed my cooking game in general. I was skeptical but now I'm a big fan. After the 16 hours, they looked like this. It's crazy how small 6 kiwis can become once you take out all that water. I then pulled out a food processor, and in my mind I thought maybe they were dry enough to chop finer. But I was pretty dumb here, while they are dehydrated they still have some water in them, so they were not brittle, just more like fruit leathery. So the food processor did nothing. I think I was thinking of freeze dried fruit, but more on that later. So with that I decided to move on to fermenting. With a 1 gallon jug, I first added in some fermado or yeast nutrient to help out the yeast. Then followed it up with the yeast. I'm using Voskvijk since it can ferment warm for a quick turnaround, and I was hoping it might add some extra fruitiness to the cider. Next the dried kiwi, then just topped up with apple juice. Giving it a good shake to mix it all together, adding an airlock, and setting it in a warm corner of my room until it was done fermenting, which was about a week later. A day or so later I had some serious activity. I didn't take any original gravity readings, but usually apple juice has an OG of 1.050, and I'm sure the fruit added a little extra sugar to bump it up, but look at it go. At the end of the week, the kiwis had all fallen to the bottom, as well as the yeast, and all the fermentation activity had stopped. Taking a taste, it was really nice, but not that interesting. So I got an idea to try adding some more dried fruit, this time in the form of freeze dried strawberries. Freeze dried fruit is dehydrated in a different manner than regular. The process involves freezing the fruit first, then the fruit is put under a vacuum and slightly warmed up, which pulls out the water and instantly evaporates in the steam, leaving behind a product that's super light and brittle. Actually as I was looking into this, I found they sell home freeze dehydrators these days. Pretty insane, I had no idea. So instead of trying to do this myself, I just went to the grocery store where they got a bunch of different types of fruit, strawberry being one. To me, freeze dried fruit is not as sweet tasting as regular dried fruit, although it does have quite a bit of sugars in it, but the important thing was that this one from Trader Joe's was free of sulfur. So before adding it in, I decided to stabilize the cider. That way when I add the strawberries in, it doesn't kick back up fermentation. Also those sugars will then help kind of back sweeten the cider, or at least that was my plan. So using some potassium sorbate and a half of a candidum tablet, I added it to my keg and then siphoned the cider on top, leaving behind the now rehydrated kiwis. I closed up the keg and let the stabilizers do their work for 24 hours. If you wanted to bottle your finished product, I would probably say it's better to add the strawberries in primary fermentation and not add any stabilizers. The next day it was time to add the dried strawberries. Again I whipped up the food processor, determined to pulverize some fruit this time, and thankfully it worked. Almost too well. Look at this cloud of strawberry dust that comes out. I decided to make this a fine powder as much as I could, so I didn't have to worry about adding the fruit to a bag or getting any fruit bits stuck in my dip tube. I wasn't sure how much to add, so I started with half the bag, or 2 tablespoons of strawberry powder. I opened up the keg and dropped it in. I was a bit curious so I took a quick sample, and I wasn't getting much strawberry flavor, but I thought maybe it needed some time to infuse. So I let it sit and carbonate in the fridge for a couple days. Eventually I did decide to dump the rest of the bag in, pulverizing it first, so all in all about 4 tablespoons of freeze dried strawberry powder. A few days later I took a sample and it was tasting spot on. The strawberries did help kind of bring back that sweetness, but one thing I didn't consider was the seeds of the strawberries. It sort of all fell to the bottom and were picked up in the first few pints, and eventually after a few pints there were no more seeds. But as you can see there's still kind of that general cloudiness or murkiness that came from the strawberry powder, which I don't mind at Hazy Cider, but most importantly it tastes great. The sugars from the strawberries brought back some of that sweetness, making this not as dry, which helped cut some of that tartness that I was getting from just using kiwis and apple juice. And it kind of helped boost the body of this cider, giving it a more full mouth feel. This was a lot of fun to try something new, and I learned a lot along the way too. I would definitely recommend adding some dried fruit to your next batch. Maybe consider adding the freeze dried fruit into a bag if you want clearer results faster. But I'm definitely going to be drying my own fruit a lot more now. I just really like knowing that there's no added preservatives or flavor additions, and while I wouldn't say this is a perfect cider, I had no issues finishing off the keg, making way for another experiment soon. If you've made a cider or beer or anything with dried fruit, I'd love to hear from you about your experience. Drop a comment below. And if you're looking for another cider experiment, I got one on comparing frozen fruit to flavor extract with some pretty interesting results. Check it out.