Apple and Raspberry Cider (or Cherry? etc)

[bingggo]

[SIZE=medium]Hi folks,[/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]I’ve been getting back into homebrew after a long break from a few initial attempts. Great to have such a good community forum on hand! I’m after any tips or comments on apple raspberry cider. I first started brewing a few apple ciders in 2L carboys. My basic 2L recipe was:[/SIZE]

• [SIZE=medium]1.75L fresh apple juice (no preservatives etc) collected fresh from the local orchard juicer (Lucaston Tas), [/SIZE]
• [SIZE=medium]The following mix heated to 80 degrees for 10m to sterilise: 125ml black tea for tannin, 25ml lemon juice for citric notes, tablespoon or two of honey, handful raisins for yeast nutrient[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=medium]yeast from the homebrew shop (Safale (S-04))[/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]Fermented 14 days, bottled to 450ml bottles with half teaspoon of sugar, tasted ok after a few weeks, and very nice dry/clear cider after 2-3 months.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]For apple/raspberry in the 2L carboy, I just reduced the apple juice a bit and added about 125g fresh raspberries to the heated mix. After bottle conditioning, this came out a nice pale pink, with subtle raspberry aroma and taste.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]To scale it up to my 25L fermenter, I'm thinking of just rounding up my quantities? Roughly:[/SIZE]

• [SIZE=medium]20L apple juice [/SIZE]
• [SIZE=medium]1.5kg raspberries in the mix heated to 80 degrees with : 1.5L black tea, 0.3L lemon juice, 300g honey, 200g raisins [/SIZE]
• [SIZE=medium]yeast [/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]Appreciate any comments or apple/raspberry recipes from others. Also thinking about adding or using cherries or other fruit instead of raspberries [/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]Cheers,[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]B[/SIZE]

 

[bingggo]

No takers? Oh well, an update for anyone interested - appreciate any comments or suggestions

Particularly: should I be bothering with only filling the fermenter about 75-80% for the first few days, then topping up with apple juice. Or should I fill more and not top up?

I drove down to Lucaston Orchards in southern Tas on their regular apple crushing day, and the friendly folk filled one of my 25L fermenters from the juicing machine. I've now got a 25L plastic fermenter and 5L glass carboy on the go with the following recipes. I only heated the raspberries this time (rather than honey and lemon as previously), to kill off any funny mouldy bits fresh raspberries at least 'appear' to have and in case I missed throwing any out! The raspberries had been frozen a couple of weeks.

I didn't bother taking OGs...

[SIZE=medium]25L 'cyser':[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 1kg fresh raspberries thawed from frozen heated to 80 degrees[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 500ml very strong black tea (a local 'English Breakfast' style, with Yunnan etc)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- juice of of four lemons[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 90g raisins[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 550g clover honey[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- topped up to 20L with fresh apple juice (will top up to 24-25L in a couple of days?)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 4 tsps pectin enzyme[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 1 tsp malic acid[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 5g sachet SafCider yeast, rehydrated.[/SIZE]


[SIZE=medium]5L 'strong cyser'[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 0.5 kg fresh thawed from frozen raspberries heated to 80 degrees[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 200ml very strong black tea (a local 'English Breakfast' style, with Yunnan etc)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- juice of one lemon[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 20g raisins[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 450g clover honey[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- topped up to 4L with fresh apple juice (will top up to 5L in a couple of days?)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 1 tsp pectin enzyme[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 0.25 tsp malic acid[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]- 3g SafCider yeast, rehydrated.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]After the mix, I pitched. The 20L happened to be 15 degrees, and the 5L 20 degrees. They're both in a garage cupboard at 20 degrees ambient. The 5L was bubbling in at least 12 hours, and the 25L by about 24 hours.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]We'll see what happens! [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]B[/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium] [/SIZE]

 

[damoninja]

Particularly: should I be bothering with only filling the fermenter about 75-80% for the first few days, then topping up with apple juice. Or should I fill more and not top up?

I would put everything you want to ferment in there from the get go, adding stuff later but makes it tricky when trying to calculate gravity readings etc. I don't think there's any real point to adding fermentables later on in the process assuming you're using enough yeast.

I've been wanting to do some kind of crazy combination of cider / berry thing for a while now... I did a hopped apple cider with citra which added a nice passionfruit flavour.

Was the cider boiled or cold pasteurised?

 

[bingggo]

Thanks! I did try a small test of dry-hopped cider which was tasty.

Most of the cider I have brewed so far is from non-pasteurised apple juice and has turned out great. This includes several 2L test batches, one 25L batch, and 1 5L batch. The juice was from Lucaston Orchards in Tas. The tests were made with their plastic 2L bottled juice (unlike their plastic bottled juice, their glass bottle juices are pasteurised), and the bigger batches with juice direct from their crushing machine at the orchard. Hopefully my success will continue with these current batches I have put on The Lucaston juice is cloudy to start with, and with a little pectin enzyme, the cider ends up clear and light gold.

I did try Duggans apple juice (another Tasmanian juice), which I believe is flash pasteurised at 70 degrees C or something like that. It didn't taste as apple-y!

Cheers,
Bruce

 

[Deep End]

What sort of damage to the pocket was 23L of Juice from Lucaston? I'd consider the drive myself if its reasonably priced. The recipes sound nice enough to me, although that stands for very little. Other thing I wondered about is why you heat the juice? Personally I'd bypass that step, and the pectic enzyme, only coz I dont mind a cloudy cider. But if you're enjoying your product it cant be a bad thing!

 

[damoninja]

I might see about getting some cider from one of the places around Adelaide, I'm sure somewhere does it...

As far as heating it, isn't this pretty much a required thing if you don't want apple cider vingear instead of alcoholic apple cider?

 

[bingggo]

Sorry if I wasn't clear - I don't heat the juice. It comes out of the cool room crusher at maybe 10 degrees, and by the time I add some hot tea and in this case hot raspberries, it's a good pitching temperature.

There seems to be a lot of variation amongst recipes online as whether to heat, add campden tablets, or not bother. I heard a good yeast innoculation will take over any baddies - fingers crossed

Lucaston charges $1.25 per litre if you bring down your container - they prefer 8L + containers. This compares to $2.50+ per litre for their bottled juice in the shop.

Last time I asked you could also drop off your container at their stall at the Melville st farmgate market one Sunday, and pick it up full when they're back a fortnight later. But as they crush on Mondays, presumably that means your full container is sitting in their cool room for 6 days. Also, not sure they've been at the market recently.

I can pm the lucaston guy's mobile number to anyone interested in going down on Mondays

B

 

[Deep End]

I'd be interested in a pm, thats quite reasonable.

 

[BeardedWonder]

I haven't had any personal experience with a raspberry cider (although I'm under pressure from The Minister for War and Finance to do one). But I recently did a raspberry beer and encountered some logistical complications that I hadn't considered.
You may have strained the raspberries out prior to adding them to the FV, in which case you don't need to bother with the rest of this post!

I boiled 1.5kg of frozen raspberries before adding them to the FV, didn't strain it just whacked them in.
My FV has it's tap at the bottom of the barrel (like most of them), which meant that the raspberry sediment settled down and created a good 2 inch thick layer.

All my hydro samples had floaties galore!

I ended up having to put the FV on a SCARY lean a couple of days prior to bottling, which gave the sediment time to shift and clear the tap. There was still one or two bottles that were a little chunky and I had to turf more beer than I would normally have done, but I got there in the end.

To further deviate, this recipe looks really tasty! I'm keen to hear how it works out for you.

BW

 

[bingggo]

Good point! I did strain in a test 2L batch, but thought I might lose flavour that way... so I am preparing to have to siphon it out of the FV in a week or two

 

[bingggo]

It tastes awesome, by the way

 

[Not For Horses]

Have you tasted the Pagan cherry cider? From memory it is 40% cherry juice. It is very delicious.