Cider Tips From A Pro Cider Maker

[avaneyk]

I used to hard carb, but now go for the soft carb unless I have guests who are used to commercial carbonation.

What do you mean by hard\soft caronation? Is soft carbonation simply less volumes CO2?

Cheers,
Andrew.

 

[kieran]

With my juicer, 4 ~150g granny smith apples gives me approx 500mL juice. By my reckoning, I'd need about 120 apples.

that is a mad number of apples.. and at my local independent (not even iga) supermarket which has amazing fruit'n'veg sells grannies at $4.99 a kilo, that's about $90 worth of apples.

It would be kind of cool to have a no-water, no-sugar added cider, but damn that is expensive!

 

[manticle]

With my juicer, 4 ~150g granny smith apples gives me approx 500mL juice. By my reckoning, I'd need about 120 apples.

that is a mad number of apples.. and at my local independent (not even iga) supermarket which has amazing fruit'n'veg sells grannies at $4.99 a kilo, that's about $90 worth of apples.

It would be kind of cool to have a no-water, no-sugar added cider, but damn that is expensive!

Lucky enough to have a fruit market near me that does various apples for around 1.50 - $2 a kilo.

 

[bill_gill85]

Does anyone have suggestions on how to avoid using sodium met?

I have some friends who are allergic to sulfur based preservatives, so I'd like to keep clear from sodium met as much as possible. I use Starsan for the majority of my brewing, but how well does it control wild yeast seeing as the foam is considered a yeast nutrient?

 

[manticle]

Does anyone have suggestions on how to avoid using sodium met?

I have some friends who are allergic to sulfur based preservatives, so I'd like to keep clear from sodium met as much as possible. I use Starsan for the majority of my brewing, but how well does it control wild yeast seeing as the foam is considered a yeast nutrient?

You can pasteurise the juice (bring above 72 degrees briefly). I've not done this but I've read it can affect the flavour.

When I make cider I chance it. I make sure the apples are clean, juice them up and add them into the fermenter. I allow a crust to form then rack off it (helps with clarification). My understanding is that this crust is the beginning of natural fermentation. Meanwhile I make a big starter with my yeast so it's ready to go (using some store bought juice and plenty of nutrient). After 24 - 48 hours I rack into a separate fermenter, leaving behind the crusties and add the lactose (boiled and cooled) and the yeast. My hope is that the wine yeast will dominate.

This has worked for me so far. I can't promise it's foolproof or the best method in the world but I can't stand that sulphite stuff. Ferment low, cold condition and fine and you should get nice clear, fresh tasting cider that emits little to no sulphur and doesn't need months to age.

The above is my experience only, based partly on what I've read about Breton ciders (clarification and slow cool fermentation).

The lack of sulphites may result in long term stability problems - I did notice the last bottle of the last batch I had was cloudy (still a great apple flavour) whereas all others were sparkling clear. It's ready sooner but like sulphite free wine it may need to be consumed young. I know which I'd prefer.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I've been using cheapest apple juice I can in anticipation of the apple harvest. Just the juice, champagne yeast and cool ale ferments to completion and beyond.

Currently Drinking cider has 700g frozen raspberries pureed and added at the very beginning.

After it went into the keg, it just gets treated like the ales in the kegerator. I think of it as champagne cider, but it is dangerously good.

I'm about to start playing with other yeasts; first up is a CraftBrewer German Wheat Yeast, fermented cold and other fruits; blueberries...

 

[beerDingo]

If your using store bought apple juice, does it matter if it has been pasteurized or not?

 

[manticle]

If your using store bought apple juice, does it matter if it has been pasteurized or not?

Pretty certain it would have been somehow made suitable for longer term storage (probably through pasteurisation). I'm not 100% sure so don't quote me but unpasteurised cider has a short shelf life and bacterial poisoning can result from soft cider that isn't fresh. Soft cider is essentially juice and it will ferment itself if left untreated. You won't get apple yeasts in a bottle of store bought as far as I'm aware.

I was talking about juicing your own.

 

[HoppingMad]

Very helpful Thirsty cheers. :icon_chickcheers:

Interesting on the champagne yeast (leaving nasty flavours). Have heard that this yeast can leave you with a very dry cider so this might be where your cider expert is coming from.

Hadn't thought of using white wine yeast. Have to give this a go. Only used Sweet Mead Yeast as it has been recommended in places, but my ciders have come out like Apple Mead. This could be the way to go instead.

Hopper.

 

[kevin_smevin]

Very helpful Thirsty cheers. :icon_chickcheers:

Interesting on the champagne yeast (leaving nasty flavours). Have heard that this yeast can leave you with a very dry cider so this might be where your cider expert is coming from.

Hadn't thought of using white wine yeast. Have to give this a go. Only used Sweet Mead Yeast as it has been recommended in places, but my ciders have come out like Apple Mead. This could be the way to go instead.

Hopper.

How does apple mead differ in taste from a cider. I'm curious because i was thinking of using sweet mead yeast for a batch. Haven't done any cider making at all yet.

Cheers

 

[Phoney]

Has anyone here made cider using store bought apple juice as well as juiced their own apples, and then been able to tell whether it is worth all of that extra effort?

 

[drsmurto]

Has anyone here made cider using store bought apple juice as well as juiced their own apples, and then been able to tell whether it is worth all of that extra effort?

I've done both using the same yeast so can compare apple with apple......

Its a lot more effort but you can blend a few varieties of apples which changes the end product which is what Thirsty pointed out in the OP.

I used (from memory) a 1:1:1 blend of fuji, sundowner( i think, or maybe it was one of the delicious family) and granny smith.

I tasted the juice of each before blending. The granny smith juice very tart as you would expect. the others were quite sweet. None had any real tannin content that you would find in a cider apple.

The result (using wyeast 4766) was a cider that (to my palate) was more complex.

I've tried straight pink lady or other sweet, eating apples and nice but a tad one-dimensional.

Hoping to find some cider apples locally this year after my grafting of french cider varieties failed and repeat the experiment.

Juicing enough apples for a 20L batch would be painful.

I did 5L batches so juicing didn't cause me too much grief using this juicer - Link

 

[Muggus]

I tasted the juice of each before blending. The granny smith juice very tart as you would expect. the others were quite sweet. None had any real tannin content that you would find in a cider apple.

Really need some bitter sort of apples to balance it out right?

I've been interested in doing a cider from scratch for a while, but always wondered where to find serious bitter/tannic apples. Would something like crab apple be acceptable?

 

[drsmurto]

Really need some bitter sort of apples to balance it out right?

I've been interested in doing a cider from scratch for a while, but always wondered where to find serious bitter/tannic apples. Would something like crab apple be acceptable?

According to 'How to make Cider.com' - yes

 

[manticle]

Juicing enough apples for a 20L batch would be painful.

Not really much more effort than hand cranking grain, mashing, boiling, chilling etc (presuming everything goes according to plan).

 

[Airgead]

According to 'How to make Cider.com' - yes

I did a crab apple cider last year. There's a thread on it here somewhere. I'm too pissed to look it up though.

I'll do another this year. It was really good.

Cheers
Dave

 

[under]

I've done Frankos cider a few times. Its bloody good, but I want just a little bit more sweetness to balance out the dryness at the end of fermentation.

Recipe -

12 Litres 100% Apple juice no added flavours or preservatives (Bought from Aldi)
8 Litres Apple & Pear juice no added flavours or preservatives (Woolworths)
250-300 grams LDME (light dried powdered malt)
3-4 Apples granny smiths or Pink ladys cut into quarters added to fermenter
Wyeast 4766 Cider Yeast (this is imperative)

Ferment for 8-12 days then chill for 2 weeks at 2-3 degrees or cold filter


Im thinking about what TB said about backsweetening ciders. But the case is, how much juice do I add to the keg before I transfer the fermented cider onto it?

 

[HoppingMad]

How does apple mead differ in taste from a cider. I'm curious because i was thinking of using sweet mead yeast for a batch. Haven't done any cider making at all yet.

Cheers

An Apple Mead tends to have a stronger, more winelike taste that can border on being a distilled spirit in some drinks (a bit like apple schnapps).

I found using the sweet mead yeast turned my cider into 'Apple Mead' a bit . It wound up with quite a winelike flavour which you would associate with a mead style of drink. Initially this was very big, (but so was the alc/vol on my cider - around 8-9%) but smoothed off with cellaring. I used it as Ross was out of Wyeast Cider Yeast at the time and this was recommended to me by a fellow brewer. Going to try a white wine version as TB suggests and also give champagne yeast a try since so many home cider makers use it. Have heard that champagne yeast can come up very dry, so a lot of people 'cold crash' stopping ferment before it gets too low giving them some sugar left for flavour. Cold crashing is not something I'm all familar with and couldn't find a lot of info on it to do with Ciders.

Not really an expert by any means but my understanding is the closer you go to 1.000 with a cider, the dryer it winds up. You want some residual sugar left to make it sweet, which is why many I've found posting on cider forums talk about 1.003-1.008 as their ideal finishing range/FG.

One of the benefits of the Wyeast Sweet Mead yeast is that its supposed to leave some residual sweetness when it ferments. I agree this happened but it did wind up very mead-like.

Hopper