Kitchen · Christmas

What is eplegløgg?

Name: Eplegløgg from Hardanger
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4 glasses
Cuisine: Norwegian
Ingredients: 1 litre apple cider from Hardanger; 2 tbsp unsweetened apple juice; 2 cinnamon sticks; 6 whole cloves; 2 star anise; peel of 1 organic orange; 2 tbsp brown syrup or honey, to taste

It is cider, left to get hot. Not red wine, not a bag of ground spice, and not a pan at a boil.

Hardanger Shop · Updated 21 September 2026

Send this on hardanger.shop/guide/en/epleglogg-oppskrift

Boil that off and you have hot, flat sugar-water and cinnamon.

Glasses4one litre of cider
To start5 minuntil it steams
Steep20–30minutes, lid on

A cup of warm eplegløgg, a bottle of cider, apples and whole spices, with snow and the fjord outside the window — Cider, apples and whole spices. The cup is the gløgg. The fjord is outside the window.

Why cider

Hardanger is apple country. The gløgg most people buy is red wine or cordial and a bag. The bag is ground spice. It clouds the cup, and it tastes of dust if you let it boil. Cider takes that even worse. What you wanted was the apple. Boil that off and you have hot, flat sugar-water and cinnamon.

Sider frå Hardanger has been a protected geographical indication since 2009, the first alcoholic product in Norway to get one. The apples have to be grown here, and the pressing, fermentation and storage have to happen in Hardanger. That is why this pot starts with cider, not with a carton of wine. Cider is alcoholic. The juice version further down is not.

So: one pan, whole spices, steam and not a boil. Sweeten at the end, because cider is different from bottle to bottle.

Recipe for four glasses

5 minutes to start · 20–30 minutes to steep · one pan

You need

1 litre of apple cider from Hardanger
2 tbsp unsweetened apple juice, only to round it
2 cinnamon sticks
6 whole cloves
2 star anise
peel of 1 organic orange, cut thin, with as little white as you can manage
2 tbsp brown syrup or honey, to taste

Method

Cider and juice in the pan. Heat until it steams. If you see big bubbles, it is too hot. Turn it down. Do not boil.
Cinnamon, cloves, star anise and peel in. Whole. Do not crush them to “get more flavour”. Time does that. Powder makes the cup cloudy.
Once it steams: off the heat, lid on, 20–30 minutes. Taste at twenty. Clove takes over if you forget the pan.
Strain. Sweeten now, not before. Serve in glasses that have stood with hot water, so the drink does not die in the cup.

Without alcohol

Same pan, apple juice instead of cider. Juice is already sweet, so start with less syrup, or none. There is no separate source for an alcohol-free version. It is the same spices on juice, for anyone who is not drinking.

For a crowd

Double the cider and the cinnamon for eight glasses. Go carefully with the cloves. They are what tips a gløgg over, not the cinnamon. Pour what you are going to drink. The rest keeps a day or two in the fridge and can be warmed again without boiling.

From the shop

These are prints, not the bottle. They are printed to order and sent by post.

Sources

Checked 21 September 2026:

The regulation protecting the name Sider frå Hardanger, made 17 April 2009.
Sider frå Hardanger at Beskyttede betegnelser — the first alcoholic product in Norway with a protected geographical indication.

The recipe is ours. The name and the year are theirs. Do not be precise about grams. Be precise about not boiling it.