Here's a fun recipe for hard apple cider! Try this for your fall beverages instead of beer.
With fall fast approaching, you might consider starting a hard cider. Hard cider makes a great alternative to beer and is very popular even with those who do not like beer. There are cider kits floating around like the one from Vinoka, but since Vinoka was recently purchased by RJ Spagnols, it is not clear if these kits are still available. Many homebrew stores have these kits on clearance.
The Process
Cider is very easy to make. All you really need is apple juice and yeast. The best apple juice is juice pressed from fresh apples right off the orchard, but many of us simply do not live near a good source of apples. We created a very tasty cider using apple juice from the store. You can use either cider or apple juice, just make sure it does not contain any preservatives. You will have a difficult time fermenting apple juice with preservatives. Mott's apple juice is a good choice. We used Archer Farms apple cider from Target.
To make the hard cider, simply pour apple juice in the fermenter, add sugar and yeast, and wait till it ferments completely. Once the specific gravity has reached 1.000, add potassium sorbate. The resulting cider will be very dry since apple juice is a very fast and clean fermentable. Once you have stabilized your cider with potassium sorbate, you can add honey and apple concentrate to give a better apple flavor.
The Easy Cider Recipe
Here is the recipe that we used:
6 gallons 100% Cider (from Le Targét - Archer Farms) White Labs Liquid Starter - English Cider Yeast 1 Lemon 0.5 gallons of water with 6 cups of white sugar diluted -S.G. 1.062
Heat up the 0.5 gallons of water to a boil, and then dissolve the sugar in the water. If you use bottled water, try to use spring water and not distilled water. Spring water has more minerals to keep the yeast happy. Add the juice from the lemon to the sugar solution. Once the water is clear again, add it to the cider in your fermenter. Take an initial gravity reading, and make sure the temperature of the apple juice is between 60 F and 70 F. Add the yeast.
The final gravity should be 1.000 after 2 weeks. After the potassium sorbate is added, put the cider into a refrigerator for a week. This reduces the chance for any renewed fermentation. If you want to bottle your cider, do not add the potassium sorbate. Add 3/4 Cup Corn Sugar and bottle. If you are able to keg your cider, you will want to add the following ingredients.
1 can 100% apple juice concentrate (any kind will do) 1 pound of honey
Make sure you heat up the honey in some water before pouring into your hard cider. Cold ciders will cause the honey to become almost solid, and is very difficult to mix.
There are also many other variations you might try.
1) Try using brown sugar or strong honey. This will create a more caramel-like flavor. 2) Light Cinnamon might be added to the apple juice to give it a bit of spice.
Good luck with your cider, and let us know how you like it!
There is an orchard with over 40 varieties of apples (and a press you can use on site!) on 66 between here and Lyons. The folks that own the place are nice and they sure do know their apples.
We're hoping to get some apples from them this fall for storage and cider (hard and the regular kind for the kiddos). Maybe we should all get together and go this fall...
From my experience, no. This recipe usually goes out the door within 6 weeks. Wines usually take a year to mellow out, but the alcohol content is much higher. I'm not sure if the times change when you crush apples instead of using juice. I've only used juice.
The addition of the frozen concentrate at the end tends to sweeten the cider up a bit, which hides any harsh notes. The cider is very popular in my neighborhood, so I must be timing it right! I've had old bottles, some as old as a year, and not noticed much flavor difference.
I just finished a batch of cider (5 gal cider, 2 lb honey, 1lb brown sugar, dry english ale yeast). It took three weeks in the carboy. We secondary firmented after the second week, added a simple syrup made from 2&1/2 cups brown sugar and 1 cup of water and soda kegged it. It's awesome! It's still a bit dry but has a ton of flavor!
I haven't tried hopping cider. Usually you want a crisp or sweet flavor. I'm not sure how well it would taste.
The second problem is the hops need to isomerize in order to provide a bitter flavor. This happens at higher temperatures. Heating apple juice that warm will create apple jam.
I don't think hopping cider is such a bad idea. You hop light-flavored wheat beers. If I were to try hopping a cider, I'd start with an ounce or less of cascade hops (per 5 gallons cider) and I'd use it for dry hopping (add it before secondary fermentation, without boiling the hops at all). That way, you'll get less of the bittering and more of the aeromatics. It will lend a citrus-like character.
One alternative to hops for a hard cider would be orange zest. It also imparts a bitterness and is used in some cysers (hard cider-meads). It lent a nice character to a cyser I made last year.
If you try hopping cider, please let me know how it turns out.
I make my cider by just allowing the juice from the pressed apples to grow its own yeast and ferment on its own, after 7 to 12 days (several factors influence this time, temperature seems to be the main decider though) it has a nice bite to it and is somewhat like a dry wine, but beyond two weeks (unless kept very cold) it gets too sour to appreciate
The orchard I go to did not mention yeast at all. Fresh pressed is a huge differance than juice. The fresh pressed will ferment very quickly and warm temperature is big factor. one gallon of cider with 3 cups of brown sugar in a room temp of 90 or 100 will ferment in about 2 to 3 days. The same ingredients in the frig will take two weeks.
90-100 F seems very high to me. I haven't fermented anything that hot, but I suspect you're going to get very different flavors (not all good) at that temperature. Let us know how it turns out for you.
I never add sugar, kills the natural subtleties of apple, and I only let it sit at room temp for a night or two to get the process started strong, then i put it in the fridge, so the cool temperature can control it and prevent the off flavors that sometimes show up, but if its fresh pressed there is no need to pitch yeast.
I've had my cider going for about three weeks. It dropped from 1064 to 1000 at which point I racked to a seconary. It is clear as a bell in there, there's no activity and no sediment forming. I think I'm ready to bottle. I'd like to have some carbonation, and my question is should I reyeast when I rack for bottling? My concern is that there's no yeast left in there and that I won't get any bubbles without reyeasting.
Unless you added a preservative like potassium sorbate or potassium metabisulphite, the yeast should be just fine. You can actually culture viable yeast out of an unfiltered beer straight out of the bottle. During fermentation, the sugar levels drop too low, and the yeast goes dormant in the beverage. Add some corn sugar, and that yeast will start dividing again and provide the carbonation you desire (provided the cider is in a sealed bottle). What you're doing is exactly what beer brewers do. The only reasons to re-pitch the yeast are 1. Use a different yeast for bottling to impart a new character/flavor and 2. to pitch a more alcohol tolerant yeast if you've got an alcohol content high enough to kill your first yeast strain. From the numbers you posted, you've got about an 8.5% alcohol content. If you used champagne yeast (popular with cider brewers), it won't even blink at that alcohol content. I've used champagne yeast to make a 15% alcohol cyser. If you used other beer y...
I let a cider primary ferment from its natural yeasts in a 5 gallon carboy w. seran wrap on top. It fuzzed up a good deal briefly but did not 'boil over.' I'm afraid it didn't effectively 'purge' itself of unwanted cultures. It created a nice crusty ring around the surface too. It sampled okay though. As a safety measure I transferred to a sterile carboy and decided to add a champaigne yeast with yeast nutrient and sterilized cider and sugar hoping it would take over and 'purge.' It hasn't bubbled up much since (4 days or so). Should I cap it with an airlock and rack it for the secondary fermentation and hope for the best, or should I still hope time, or adding more nutrient/sugar/cider can get it to bubble over and 'purge' itself first?
I've always been a little afraid of open fermentation. The crust around the top doesn't scare me in and of itself. How did the brew smell? You can often get an idea of what the contaminates are from the smell. We could do better if you have some sheep's blood agar and some HEA plates to culture the stuff on, as well as some YPD with pen-strep to check for fungi, but that may be a little too extreme. Okay, that would be a lot too extreme (but fun and interesting at the same time).
Here's what I've got: If the new cider contained preservatives, that could be the reason why you didn't see new bubbling. If it was preservative free, you could purge your batch of the current flora by adding 5 campden tablets or a half teaspoon of potassium metabisulphite per five gallons of cider. This will kill many bacteria and wild yeasts in your brew by bubbling off some toxic sulphur dioxide. 24 hours after adding the sanitizer, pitch your new yeast.
Now, I should mention, it may sound like killing off the bacteria in the solution will prevent the cider from making you sick. This is not always true. There are too types of food poisoning: illness from bacteria in the food, and illness from toxins made by bacteria in the food. Most types of E. Coli, shigella, and salmonella are bacteria that infect and cause disease. C. Botulinum and Staphylococcus are a couple examples of bacteria that produce preformed toxins. Basically, if you kill those bacteria in a manner that doesn't break down the toxin, you can still get sick. I have no idea how likely it is that you're cider is harboring those kind of bugs, but I can say that a higher acidity makes bacteria contamination less likely. Professional brewers wash their yeast in a Phosphoric acid of pH 2 to kill bacteria and weak yeast between batches. C. botulinum is an anaerobe, so unless the cider was in an airtight container or some other bug was using up all the oxygen, that's not l...
unless the cider was in an airtight container or some other bug was using up all the oxygen, that's not likely to be an issue. So, assuming there's no risk of botulism, the biggest thing to watch for is diarrhea around 4 hours after drinking the cider. If that happens, you're probably looking at a preformed toxin and you should discard the cider. I know this was ridiculously long, but hopefully it lets you make an informed decision about your next step.
Thanks. I pitched new champaigne yeast and yeast nutrient along with some sterile preservative-free cider. It made lovely sounds and tiny bubbles, but in the few days it hasn't bubbled over. It tasted lovely though, like an edgy champaigne. A brewing friend told me that after primary fermentation even with the nutrients it wouldn't rise much. It is now airlocked and rackes, so let's hope 2 months from now I don't get any of those nasty bugs you mentioned.
I can't wait to try! yhanks for Cider Recipe
