With fall & our 2nd Annual Harvest Fest party coming up, let's talk ciders for those wanting to brew their first batch or refine their techniques. A few topics for discussion for those of us (myself included) that are new to ciders:
- I know that pure apple juice from the orchard is best, but that's becoming harder to find this year for a decent price with the drought. Do you want to use apple juice only (orchard or store bought) or can you use cider already in a jug?
- Anyone have recommendations for the best place to get your juice, be it from a store or a local orchard?
- What's the general rule of thumb for time needed in order to spit out a kick ass batch?
I know a lot of this can be found on HBT but sometimes it's painful to wade through the useless posts to find good information. It'd be nice to have something here for everyone to reference with the Harvest Festival coming up. Hell, if you have a great link that explains everything that would even be appreciated by us newbies. My mind is now open for exploration, go!
I ended up going with Aldi's apple juice & kept the gravity somewhat low since i will be on vacation right before the party & need to knock this out quickly.
If anyone is wondering or planning to use it, the OG of Aldi's apple juice is 1.050 so you don't have to both with measuring it. Cheers!
Thanks for the info everyone! Looking forward to giving this my first shot soon
After watching this;http://www.brewingtv.com/episodes/2012/9/18/brewing-tv-episode-68-how-to-make-graf.html I wanna make Graf!
I'm not expert. But I've fooled around enough with cider and different yeast to figure out what I prefer.
I don't care for champagne yeast...as it produces a dry cider. I tend to lean towards medium (OG between 1.002 -1.012) and sweet ciders (OG above 1.012).
To produce ciders that are medium to sweet I tend to use ale yeast. I've had good results with European ale from white labs. I initially chose this strain because it has a super low sulfur production...which I was getting from other ale strains. I also like scotch ale strains, as they have a lower attenuation and will often stop early leaving a sweet cider.
I also like to experiment with adding fruits and various adjuncts...mainly post fermentation.
You can use store bought cider. And you can make a great cider. But, if you use pressed cider from an orchard...it taste better, in my opinion. That may be hard this year though. A lot of orchards were hit by frost in april and a drought over the summer.
I have never made a cider, but I thought the video on brewing TV explained the process and various tweaks pretty well.
http://www.brewingtv.com/episodes/2012/9/7/brewing-tv-episode-67-how-to-make-hard-cider.html
If your using store bought apple juice, Aldi's has the best deal around at a $1.49 per 1/2 gallon.
You can back sweeten with 3 cans of frozen concentrate without worrying about kickstarting the yeast.
Also the yeast you use can and will determine how dry your cider becomes. Champagne and wine yeast will give ya a dryer more crisp cider while a ale yeast will give a you sweeter cider.
Experiment! I added smoked jalapenos with charred oak spirals to a cider this summer with great results. Also you can use 2 Lbs honey instead of brown sugar. You will have to boil for 5 minutes when using the honey. Oh and when ya add honey it is no longer a cider but a cyser.
Have fun!
If you are planning on back sweetening you will need to add potassium sorbate 24hrs before adding any more sugars to make sure the yeast will not restart fermentation. That being said the 3 ciders I have made I have backsweetened with non-fermentable sugar (splenda) before kegging and did not need to add the potassium sorbate.
I by no means am an expert. I have done only two ciders and both were for Ides of Cider last year (our 1st annual "Harvest Fest"). But, I did learn that in order to maintain some sweetness in the final product you must either (a) cold crash the carboy to stop the yeast from fermenting all the sugars out; or (b) sweeten the cider after-the-fact either by fermenting four gallons and leaving the fifth to add post-fermentation to crank up the sweetness or you can add brown sugar or other such sweetener after fermentation.
I did a regular ol', just apple juice cider; and then I added peach puree to the other batch. Both were too dry since I did not do either of the aforementioned "sweetening" techniques.
There's what little I know....
I too am looking to make my first cider so any tips would be appreciated
Kevin Saberniak