First cider attempt

[Killer Brew]

Only my third ever brew and thought I would attempt a Apple Pear Cider to thank my wife for her ongoing support of my hobby

My research consisted of a fair bit of reading on this forum and there were plenty of great tips and ideas. Thanks all.

Aiming for a "rustic" style cider rather than soda pop drink. So my recipe was as follows:

- 6L Coles Apple Juice
- 3L Bickfords Cloudy Pear Juice
- 2 lemons
- 3 green tea bags
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 100g LME
- 60ml leatherwood honey
- 10g yeast (left over from beer kits)

1) combined the zest from 2 lemons, honey, crushed cinnamon sticks and liquid from brewed green tea and simmered in saucepan for 20 mins.
2) added LME and simmered a further 10 mins
3) added to fermenter along with the bottled juice and juice of 2 lemons
4) rehydrated and pitched the yeast at 24 degrees

Smells fantastic and after 48 hours is showing plenty of surface activity in the fermenter. Now to play the waiting game. Feel free to fire any feedback at me as I'm brand new at this!

 

[monsterstill]

Let me know how it goes sounds awesome as someone new to brewing I love the idea of different brewing ideas not just buying a kit from the shop.

 

[Killer Brew]

Could use some advice here. When should I take a gravity reading? Is it like beer and I should check after a week? Doesn't seem to be a lot happening in the fermenter.

 

[joshF]

The teabags and cinnamon absolutely help in my opinion. I made something similar with 2 x 2.4L bottles of Woolies apple juice and 2 x 850ml Golden valley pear juice the other week.
Boiled 2 english breakfast teabags with about half a teaspoon of cinnamon in 250ml of boiling water and added it into the fermenter.
fermented with mangrove jacks cider yeast.

Tasted absolutely phenomenal. If you try and get fermentation to stop right around the 1.008 mark you'll get something with a nice apple (couldn't taste the pear much at all) flavour to it with a little bit of dryness. I had people say it tasted and looked very similar to james squire orchard crush apple cider but not quite as sweet.

good luck with it mate and let us know how it goes.

 

[Deep End]

Cider usually goes a little slower than beer, but depending on temp, I'd take a reading as soon as activity ceases through the airlock, take readings over a few days and when you get three readings of the same value it should be fine to bottle. There is no rush though, it could sit there for a week or two or longer with no harm if its airtight. Cider will come down to .990 -1.000 if you let it, depending on what other things you have added it could be higher when its done.

 

[Killer Brew]

The teabags and cinnamon absolutely help in my opinion. I made something similar with 2 x 2.4L bottles of Woolies apple juice and 2 x 850ml Golden valley pear juice the other week.
Boiled 2 english breakfast teabags with about half a teaspoon of cinnamon in 250ml of boiling water and added it into the fermenter.
fermented with mangrove jacks cider yeast.

Tasted absolutely phenomenal. If you try and get fermentation to stop right around the 1.008 mark you'll get something with a nice apple (couldn't taste the pear much at all) flavour to it with a little bit of dryness. I had people say it tasted and looked very similar to james squire orchard crush apple cider but not quite as sweet.

good luck with it mate and let us know how it goes.

Thanks for that. When you say get the fermentation to stop how is that achieved? Will it not just stop like beer?

 

[Killer Brew]

So just drew down a sample and already at 1008 after 5 days. Of concern though is that it didn't taste like anything someone would choose to drink. The leatherwood honey flavour (minus the sweetness) seemed to dominate along with some pear but already very dry. Is there something I should do now to turn it around or wait until fermentation finishes?

 

[indica86]

Why did you make it with all the extra ingredients (apart from apple juice)?
What were you hoping to achieve and what research have you done?

What did you expect - I would think some kind of spicy apple tea with alcohol.

 

[Killer Brew]

Why did you make it with all the extra ingredients (apart from apple juice)?
What were you hoping to achieve and what research have you done?

What did you expect - I would think some kind of spicy apple tea with alcohol.

That is a lot of questions, none of which i suspect are of any assistance to me right now. However. My wife isn't a big apple cider fan, more pear cider, so tried for a blend. The extra ingredients were to add some tannins and spice. My research consisted of reading the 14 page cider sticky so more than some and a lot less than others I'm sure. What did i expect? A dry version of the complex brew i tasted before fermentation.

 

[indica86]

Generally with brewing I find it safer to start simple and work out what works fro me from there. That is the point I was trying to make.
You say it doesn't taste like something someone would choose to drink, and having made such a complicated brew you now have no idea why,

 

[oglennyboy]

I've just done my first ciders, 50-odd litres bulk from an orchard split into 3 batches. Adds were pretty simple - couple tins of pear juice to about 12.5% of total vol, 4kg thawed cherries+100g lactose, and DME+med crystal+hops, all with cider yeast at 1.062. Knew they'd still finish pretty low even with non-fermantables so had a look at what lactose does across different rates when bottling and as a bulk add. Even in the samples without it, finishing at 1.002 does not taste as dry as I was expecting. The kit beer yeast will add characters different to cider yeast, maybe a bit jarring with the other cider-y ingredients?
I reckon with the dozen or so bottles you'll get, try different amounts of priming sugar and/or lactose and/or pear juice in a few so you can compare the effects across the same base brew. Got another 2-3 weeks conditioning (consensus seems to be longer is better). The 67 bottles I ended up with of 3 base brews and a mix of priming, lactose, additional juice rates etc mean there's a load of options to compare. Provided the labels stay on
cheers

 

[Killer Brew]

Thanks for that. I did some playing around with the sample I drew down last night and got it to a place where the wife thinks she can drink it by sweetening. Not my cup of tea but hey....if she is happy. I prefer it to be drinkable straight out of the bottle so once fermentation is complete will gradually add some lactose until it is just sweet enough and then rely on some long bottle conditioning to improve it.

 

[wareemba]

it will change flavour/taste as it ages too... won't it?

The leatherwood honey flavour (minus the sweetness) seemed to dominate

maybe the honey sunk to the bottom?