Uncommon Crop Cider - Highbush Cranberry

About

Highbush cranberry (Viburnum Tribolum) is not closely related to the cranberry that we all know. Though the fruit share some characteristics with cranberries, highbush cranberries are members of the honeysuckle family that grow into large bushes. The fruit are bright red, tart, and have some unique bitter or astringent flavors. They’re a native species in the Northern US and parts of Canada.

Growing Highbush Cranberry

Highbush cranberry don’t have a strong history of selective breeding or cultivar development. Carandale Fruit Farm, our partner on the project, has some experience growing highbush cranberries, and their insights are described in more detail here: http://uncommonfruit.cias.wisc.edu/?p=185

Making the Cider

For the Highbush Cranberry Cider, we simply took pressed highbush cranberry juice and added it right into the cider at the start of fermentation. The highbush cranberry juice was very intensely flavored and had a strong aroma, and we added just 5 gallons of it to a 50 gallon batch. We fermented it out to dry.

Tasting the Cider

The Highbush Cranberry Cider was certainly unique. Some people really didn’t like it while others found it delightfully intriguing. Overall it scored a 6.12 out of 10 on our consumer tasting survey, making it a little lower than many of the other ciders on average. Our tasting panel focus group described the cider using the words in the apple word cloud below.

Conclusions

While the Highbush Cranberry Cider may not have scored as high as some others, we wouldn’t completely write it off. It did add some very unique flavors and aromas, and it’s possible that with cultivar development, some of the more desirable flavors and aromas could be more emphasized while some of the more contested flavors and aromas could be avoided. Of course cultivar development is a longer road to go down, but the intensity and uniqueness of the fruit make it a possible candidate for more exploration.