Freezing apples affect finished cider flavor?

[Scott Harring]

Last year some of my batches were from apples frozen in a chest freezer and thawed prior to pressing.  The fresh juice tasted different than expected for fresh cider, perhaps more earthy contribution from the skin.  I didn't do any back-to-back comparison with freshly ground apples, but am wondering if freezing prior to pressing affects the final fermentation flavor profile.  I'm very happy with how my finished cider turned out, but I'm curious if anyone has any experience with the subject. 

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Yes it does.

I don't know for sure for the simple freezing in a chest freezer and thawing.

But if doing a natural cold freezing during winter, we actually get multiple partial freezes and thaws as temperatures get colder in beginning of winter. These break the skin cells resulting in skin pigments and phenolic substances migrating into the juice.

The resulting cider has a definite special flavor - I call such cider "Winter cider"

See this article I wrote in the Malus Zine: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15HFs2TvGbEf58nrCpT4OLwGyTCSbygzS/view?usp=sharing

[Scott Harring]

Thanks Claude, that's helpful.  Nice article too. 

Winter Cider sounds interesting, I'm tempted to try my hand at it this year.  Do you have ideal starting and finishing gravity ranges that work well for this style?  Or a typical TA range that you like to see?

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Well, Brix, residual sugar and TA values are mentioned in the article...

[Richard Reeves]

Couldn't say for sure about your primary query i.e. flavor profile, put I'd like to expand the conversation a bit. I've been using nothing but frozen, thawed apples for three or four years now, IMO my cider is better than ever: but a caveat, I press them whole. No milling. Juice clarity is astounding, solids essentially zero, which is the holy grail in the white wine fermentation business, make of that what you will. Picture attached is juice right from the press pan spigot. I do take a juice volume hit on the dryish, mealy cider types in the 10-12% range but when pressing straight desserts yield is about right. I'm lucky that I have more than enough of the cider types so I don't mind the yield loss too much. Sold the mill this year: I don't miss it's noise, I don't miss cleaning it, and I especially don't miss stopping and clearing the jammed apples when I overfeed it or when the mealy types just refuse to come down the chute. But it gets better: I can press apples any day of the year I choose, I can freeze juice for fermentation later, which is to say  I can fine-tune my production schedule and volume to my consumption schedule and volume. I suspect, although I can't say for certain, that Claude's experience of apples going through multiple freeze-thaw cycles might effect the flavor profile rather more than my process does, a single deep freeze then a thaw, especially as I suspect those apples might spend a fair amount of time at the freeze-thaw boundary, an opportunity for both biology and oxygen to have their way with them, albeit slowly, but having effect on the final flavor profile none the less. I can say this about my ciders: they are always straw-colored, never in the orange color band, although that may say as much about O2 and SO2 management as it does fruit processing protocol. Anyway, I'm super happy with my system now, it's nicely fine-tuned for my needs, your mileage may vary.

[Belinda Kemp]

Hi All

Just to raise one concern re: Nagardo - it is of mushroom origin & there are folks out there with mushroom allergies but I do not know if this product would cause a reaction for those who are allergic to mushrooms. Or even if there is enough of the mushroom proteins responsible for the allergy are even present in Nagardo. Might be worth contacting the manufacturer/distributor to check.

Belinda Kemp

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From: cider-w...@googlegroups.com <cider-w...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Richard Reeves <rkreev...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2026 05:38
To: Cider Workshop <cider-w...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [Cider Workshop] Re: Freezing apples affect finished cider flavor?

Couldn't say for sure about your primary query i.e. flavor profile, put I'd like to expand the conversation a bit. I've been using nothing but frozen, thawed apples for three or four years now, IMO my cider is better than ever: but a caveat, I press them whole. No milling. Juice clarity is astounding, solids essentially zero, which is the holy grail in the white wine fermentation business, make of that what you will. Picture attached is juice right from the press pan spigot. I do take a juice volume hit on the dryish, mealy cider types in the 10-12% range but when pressing straight desserts yield is about right. I'm lucky that I have more than enough of the cider types so I don't mind the yield loss too much. Sold the mill this year: I don't miss it's noise, I don't miss cleaning it, and I especially don't miss stopping and clearing the jammed apples when I overfeed it or when the mealy types just refuse to come down the chute. But it gets better: I can press apples any day of the year I choose, I can freeze juice for fermentation later, which is to say  I can fine-tune my production schedule and volume to my consumption schedule and volume. I suspect, although I can't say for certain, that Claude's experience of apples going through multiple freeze-thaw cycles might effect the flavor profile rather more than my process does, a single deep freeze then a thaw, especially as I suspect those apples might spend a fair amount of time at the freeze-thaw boundary, an opportunity for both biology and oxygen to have their way with them, albeit slowly, but having effect on the final flavor profile none the less. I can say this about my ciders: they are always straw-colored, never in the orange color band, although that may say as much about O2 and SO2 management as it does fruit processing protocol. Anyway, I'm super happy with my system now, it's nicely fine-tuned for my needs, your mileage may vary.

On Monday, May 18, 2026 at 5:29:03 PM UTC-7 Scott Harring wrote:

Last year some of my batches were from apples frozen in a chest freezer and thawed prior to pressing.  The fresh juice tasted different than expected for fresh cider, perhaps more earthy contribution from the skin.  I didn't do any back-to-back comparison with freshly ground apples, but am wondering if freezing prior to pressing affects the final fermentation flavor profile.  I'm very happy with how my finished cider turned out, but I'm curious if anyone has any experience with the subject. 

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