How To Make Great Cider. Easily.

[beercus]

online fresh juice, no cider varieties
https://shop.summersnowjuice.com.au/

I mad a cider with Woolies homebrand apple and pear juice. It tasted like water after a feww weeks in the bottle. I stashed it away and it has been 18months since bottling. I need to get a few out and have a taste. Will they age well?

beercus

 

[TimT]

I'm not going to enter into the boiling can reduce the apple flavours discussion, but...
I made a cider with OzTops (i know - i'm lazy when it comes to cider) last year where i boiled up some of the juice and then steeped some jasmine/green/pear teabags. Jasmine tea is typically green tea with jasmine added to it. This one was a fancy one with some sort of pear in there too. The pear probably added nothing in the scheme of things though.
I added some lactose while it was still hot and then added it back to the bottle. Something from the tea gave it a nice rounded edge. there was definitely some silkiness from the jasmine. I guess the green tea helped with adding some tannins?
Either way, thoroughly recommend using jasmine tea in your cider.

Made some rhubarb wine earlier this year and bulk primed the lot with some water that I boiled, mixed with sugar, and then dumped a whole lot of chai tea leaves in to steep for a while. The tea leaves drank up all the damned water! However the priming seems to have worked well now, so hopefully those vanilla flavours and tannins from the tea will complement (compliment?) the wine well.

 

[TimT]

As to the boiling/not boiling thing, well, I cold steeped the rhubarb for a few days, then got sick of waiting for the rhubarb flavour to leech out into the water so I boiled the lot for pretty much instant flavour! (Then, um, left it for another day or so to cool down).

 

[Alex.Tas]

I do like rhubarb wine. Its on my to do list this year. I'll have to pick your brain later on in the season when my tiny 4-5 plants start giving me something to work with. Good move with the Chai too. Maybe a sparkling chai mead?

 

[Jimrtl81]

If you want more apple flavour and some residual sweetness try bakers yeast.
Using woollies select apple and pear juice plus around a tablespoon of yeast produces a cider very very similar to bulmers.

Too sweet for me though, I buy our local woollies out of apple juice at least once a month to make apfelwine.

 

[TimT]

You'll have plenty of rhubarb soon enough Alex. They grow like the clappers.

 

[Airgead]

If you want more apple flavour and some residual sweetness try bakers yeast.

Or not. It depends.

Bread yeast really isn't a consistent product (in brewing terms). It varies brand to brand and sometimes batch to batch. One time it will give you something sweet, the next it might give you something super dry, the next something really foul. It depends what they freeze dried that day.

Bread yeasts are designed to multiply really super fast with a very low lag time but this comes at the expense of clean fermentation. They tend to throw a lot of esters and other stuff. Not an issue for a 1 hour bread ferment but can be rotten for a beer or wine ferment.

I really don't recommend using bread yeast in anything except bread. Actually, even for bread I'm a sourdough guy so I don't even use it there.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Bribie G]

I kegged my latest batch of Aldi cider, just straight juice, malic acid, Black Rock cider yeast and yeast nutrient. I tried to track down some sodastream apple concentrate, Woolies had every flavour except apple.

However I got a couple of bottles of Bickfords Cloudy Apple cordial. A splash in the glass then topped up with the Aldi is very nice, heaps better than that dreadful five seeds and also the James Squire.

Recommend.

 

[Maheel]

i'd like a "simple" recipe for a dry cider normally get something "dry" from the interesting range at the BShop (not strongbow etc)

wife likes it... thought she might like a summer keg of it if i could get one done in the next 2 weeks in the ferment fridge...

is there and UHT or fresh juice i could use or is it not worth it and i should just buy here 6'rs ?

any one got a link / recipe

 

[pk.sax]

I say mix it up, get some uht preservative free juice and some cloudy apple, whatever ratio you want to afford.
ferment it dry with champagne yeast (goes down to 1.000 ± 0.002). Give it a week or two to age at least.

If you can, get some malic acid, ascorbic acid, tartaric acid and add for some depth of flavour. This might be a bit ott for you so just get some tart - ish tasting apples and crush them up, seeds and all and put that in the fermenter with the juice.

 

[Bribie G]

Aldi apple juice comes out as dry as a dead dingo's, and can be pimped by adding something with a more appley flavour into the ferment. Definitely malic acid, use a fair bit of yeast nutrient. And I would definitely look into tipping in a container of sodastream apple, or a couple of bottles of that Bickfords, when pitching.

I've tried various UHT juices and Aldi comes out best. Coles and Woolies juices in the 3L bottles are a bit bland and gutless, Aldi stuff has a nice apple aroma that even neighbours could pick drifting from the garage when I opened the door.

Craftbrewer have dedicated cider yeasts.

 

[SmuggledBudgie]

Hey guys and girls,

Bout to start my second batch of cider, first one was a mangrove jacks craft series pear cider. It came out alright, but tasted a bit of bananas and that slight artificial flavour from the enhancer.

This time I'm going to try from Apple juice from the supermarket.

Have read through this very informative thread, and it seems the general feeling is that some of the Apple flavour is lost during fermentation.

Has anyone tried adding schnapps to restore some apple flavour?

I noticed on another site adding "Frozen Apple concentrate" (don't think that's available in Aus?) can help add body and flavour to the final product. Anyone found something similar or had experience with this? Perhaps adding some real crushed apples?

I guess I'm just trying to avoid a watery/lacking flavour final product.

Thanks

 

[pk.sax]

A) apple juice is really simple sugars
B) complexity comes from the other stuff in apples that have other stuff in the first place.
C) supermarket juice is made from appkes with no discernible other stuff.
D) cloudy juices (and unfiltered crushed juices from such apples) contains a bit of other stuff that makes the cider taste better.
E) cider is not beer and malt + water + yeast is not the same as juice + yeast, the juice from eating apples is really simple sugars.

In effect, you're gonna need to either drink it sweet for the appleyness or add flavour to it use richer juices/crush with pits/use tannins from tea/malic acid etc.

 

[Catherina]

Crab apples, the original wild form of the tree, do not make good cider on their own, but can be added to other apples if you need extra tannin..

 

[Trevandjo]

How much malic acid should you add? Where do you buy it?

 

[hapitan]

How do you stop it getting too dry if you are bottling? Or just chuck it all in, wait and see?

I'd like a slightly - but not too sweet - cider, stored in 330l bottles. I'm thinking I want to use some of the cloudy stuff, as I like that.

Also, any yeast suggestions? I have some white wine yeast here. Or US-05? Oh and what temperature do you usually ferment at?

 

[TimT]

Hapitan - I think the usual methods are stopping the ferment artificially (boiling to kill the yeast and carbonating), backsweetening, or using an artififcial sweetener.

I wouldn't do it myself - at most I might consider adding honey or something right while serving. I rely on ageing to bring flavour and character to my cider (and meads, and other wines). The funny thing is a lot of the time, after the ferment has finished, the wine will taste dry - and then, after ageing some more, it will gain a sweetness. (At the mead taster we went to the other night they said you taste the sweetness because spices and flavourings you associate with that sweetness still remain, tricking your brain into thinking it's sweet - maybe. It certainly seems to happen with a lot of wines.)

 

[Bribie G]

Malic acid is available online, I got mine from ESB, The Brew Shop, Peakhurst. I just put in a couple of rounded teaspoons.

 

[Airgead]

Maic acid - depends on the apples (or juice) you have. Some have plenty already. Some don't.

Usual advice applies - add a little, taste, repeat if necessary. its easy to add more. Its really hard to take any out of you add too much.

For the record, I don't use any malic in my ciders but I do throw in a percentage of high acid apples (usually grannies and crabs) which gives me all the acid I need.

Cheers
Dave

 

[mkstalen]

Anybody thought about using Appelstroop to beef up their appleiness in their cider?
http://www.dutchfood.com.au/_Rinse-appelstroop-(apple-spread)_Spreads-Hails_F011.htm

You can occasionally find it in Woolworths.

I might give it a go next time I do a cider.