Homemade Kratom Apple Cider (Krapple Cider)

Head to your local farmer’s market and grab a tote full of apples ASAP! (And make sure to check out the notes at the end of the recipe for a surprise snack that comes along with krapple cider…)

Cider Through the Ages

From ancient Mesopotamia to the biblical era in the Mediterranean, people have been drinking the fermented juice of all kinds of fruits. Cider-making with apples goes back thousands of years, and was brought to the American colonies from Europe in the early 1600s.

Everyone in the colonies drank cider instead of water, fearing that the water wasn’t safe to consume. They fermented apples to make cider, which had an alcohol content around that of beer.

The practice – and later, industry – was supported by labor and cultivation of apple varieties by Indigenous Americans and slaves throughout the northeastern and southeastern regions of the continent.

Kratom and Apple Cider: The Fruits of Labor

Throughout the 1700s, cider was enormously popular – it’s estimated that adults consumed several liters each day. Cider was also used as payment and refreshment for field workers. Kratom has similarly been chewed and drunk by field laborers for hundreds of years.

Kratom and cider were community strongholds, drunk with regularity for some similar purposes, albeit in very distant regions of the world. And both have gone through periods of unfounded prohibition.

Prohibitionist Parallels

It seems as though every food and drink we come across has been involved in one form of prohibition or another, and apples are no exception!

Cider-making was already declining in popularity by the time Prohibition was enacted in 1920. Historians point to a number of hypotheses for the decline, from the relative ease of cultivating wheat for beer to the introduction of invasive insects that harmed apple orchards.

Cider production was legalized within a year or so into the Prohibition era, but cider-making had still taken a hit. Prohibition resulted in the segmentation of sweet, unfermented ciders and alcoholic ciders. The latter have since been referred to as “hard” ciders.

Kratom was first made illegal in Thailand in 1943, as the Thai government lost tax revenue from opium sales when its populace started chewing leaves and drinking tea from the locally-available kratom trees instead of buying opium.

Ciders have become much more popular amongst Americans in the past few decades (as has kratom). Once drunk by laborers, it’s now brewed into top-shelf varieties found at cideries and craft breweries across the country.

No need to head to your local cidery though, because we’ve got a kratom apple cider recipe for you to brew at home! We haven’t yet tried fermenting apples, but we’ve found that the addition of kratom to the apple and spice base creates a unique sweet cider with bold and deep flavors that is not at all like your average apple juice or grocery store cider.

Brewing Kratom with Apples

We always recommend brewing your krapple cider when the fruit is in season. It’s not very likely that you’ll find apples, oranges, and kratom growing on trees in the same region, unless you have a greenhouse. If you have access to organic and local fruit, though, we definitely suggest picking some up.

Not only does that reduce the environmental footprint of your brew, but it also might make it better for you. Most commercial apples are sprayed with pesticides and are coated with a thin layer of wax.

You can always peel your apples, but that makes the prep time for krapple cider a good deal longer.

What type of apples should you use for kratom apple cider?

We used mostly cortland apples in our first round of krapple cider. They were available locally, perfectly crisp, and pretty sweet with a hint of tartness. Needless to say, we bought an entire bushel and ate our way through as many as we could before they got a bit soft. Making apple cider with kratom was the perfect solution for using up those less-crisp apples.

Mulled Kratom Tea

We’re huge proponents of using mulling spices with kratom in your everyday brews. Spices like cinnamon and nutmeg have their own beneficial properties and can really enhance the flavor of kratom.

Krapple cider goes one step further with pressed apples – one very large, fairly time-consuming, but well-worth-it step. This is a recipe everyone will love, whether or not they enjoy the taste of kratom. The sweetness of the fruit tempers the bitterness of the kratom, and the mulled spices work their magic underneath it all.

Don’t like cloves or nutmeg? A few members of the Top Tree team absolutely despise cloves, but still swooned over krapple cider. Not convinced? You can omit them or substitute other spices and herbs, like allspice or ginger.

When to add kratom?

The kratom tea bags are added during the final 30 minutes of cooking. The crushed leaves in the tea bags don’t need to be steeped for the full 2.5 hour brew time. We use Super Green Malay kratom tea bags in this recipe, but you can choose whichever strain of tea you like best.

We do steep them for a bit longer than our basic brew time. That’s because we’re not using fresh water and lemon for the extraction, we’re steeping the tea leaves in, well … basically, diluted apple sauce.

The bit of citric acid from the sliced orange and the malic acid in the apples can slightly boost your brew strength, as acidic liquids aid the extraction of alkaloids from your kratom tea leaves.

The tea bags are strained out at the end along with the spices and the pulp from the apples.

If you’re used to store-bought ciders or apple cider recipes with added sugar, kratom apple cider may seem less sweet. We promise you won’t be disappointed by the flavor, but you can always add in a bit of organic brown sugar or your choice of sweetener after you’ve strained your cider.