Kit Or Apple Juice?

[tez]

Hey fellas,

Thinking bout making a cider this weekend.. i was just going to grab a kit and do as my local brew shop instructed, but he informed me he has never made a cider.
Anyway ive be reading posts in this section and im not sure how i should go about.
Most of you blokes say just grab 23 litres of apple juice and and throw in yeast.

Whats the go? should i use a kit or juice? what has better results?

And ive also seen someone say use a kit and apple juice together..

 

[Airgead]

Hey fellas,

Thinking bout making a cider this weekend.. i was just going to grab a kit and do as my local brew shop instructed, but he informed me he has never made a cider.
Anyway ive be reading posts in this section and im not sure how i should go about.
Most of you blokes say just grab 23 litres of apple juice and and throw in yeast.

Whats the go? should i use a kit or juice? what has better results?

And ive also seen someone say use a kit and apple juice together..

You can make a pretty good cider out of a kit (if you get a good kit) but you can also make a really nasty cider out of a kit. On the other hand you can also make a really nasty cider out of juice.

I have made just about every kit on the market (up till I gave up on them a few years ago) and only found 2 that would give a good cider (then again my idea of a good cider may not match yours). One is an austro-vino kit which you can only get mail order from ibrew in QLD. The other was William Tell (I think) but I haven't seen it around for a few years. They were expensive kits. The cheap ones often bulk out the juice with malt or sugar. Sugar makes it less apple flavoured and quite bland. Malt makes it more beery (I believe the technical terms is a Graff). Quite a few seem to use artificial sweeteners to avoid an overly dry cider (one of the main problems with ciders made from all juice).

I say go the juice. That way if you stuff up its your fault and you can do something to fix it. If you get a nasty kit cider you don't know whether it is something you did wrong or just a bad kit. I have also found that on average more good ciders are made from juice than from kits. You can also do small batches to try out diferent yeasts which is much harder with a kit.

The key to making a good all juice cider seems to be in the yeast selection. There's plenty of suggestions in other threads here so give a few small batches a go and see which works for the juice you can get and matches your tastes

Cheers
Dave

 

[komodo]

Get juice and add yeast ferment and drink. simple easy and no weird tastes.
You could add some vanilla pods and cinamon too.

Do you keg or bottle?

If you keg you can back sweeten. If you bottle you might have to do a bit of research if you dont like it too dry (I keg so I've not paid a great deal or attention to what to do when bottling)

 

[manticle]

Go the juice. Chuck in some lactose. Ferment low. Be patient.

 

[komodo]

search for the simple cider thread - plenty of info in there

 

[wyatt_girth]

I don't regularly drink cider so can't really compare but I recently grabbed an Oztops kit to have a go at making something for SWMBO and they seem to be well received. Only thing is they are on a smaller scale. Less than a week to ferment and be chilled to drink. website here

 

[komodo]

Oz tops are great - they are what really got me in to home brewing actually

 

[cdbrown]

All you need is 8 bottles of the 2.4L Berri Apple Juice (or switch a few around and get Apple & Pear for a slightly different flavour), some yeast nutrient and Wyeast 4766 Cider yeast. I also added 0.2kg LDME just to add a bit of body. Fermented from 1.050 down to 1.005 at 20C in 6 days. I'm not a cider drinker, but those that are said it was a very nice dry cider which is only slightly sweet. I'll be making it again for summer.

 

[Tim]

I think its important to note that cider yurns out a lot better when using juice from cider apple varieties. But if you are setting out to achieve something like Strongbow, Pipsqueak etc then you probably want to dilute commercial apple juice and add some glucose. These commercial offerings are more of a glucose wine than cider!

 

[Airgead]

I think its important to note that cider yurns out a lot better when using juice from cider apple varieties. But if you are setting out to achieve something like Strongbow, Pipsqueak etc then you probably want to dilute commercial apple juice and add some glucose. These commercial offerings are more of a glucose wine than cider!

Amen to that but lets start him off slow before we offer him the red pill and introduce him to the world of juice blending...

Cheers
Dave

 

[tez]

yeah sweet as thanks fellas

ill give it a crack with the juice then. Thats a great idea about doing the small batches, cant believe i didnt think of it. I might buy another fermenter (as to not interupt my chrissy beer stock pile) and have a play with a bottle at a time of juice.

Is there much difference from say a bottle of apple juice using oztops to doing it myself in a fermenter? might just grab the oz tops if its the same sorta thing.

 

[Airgead]

yeah sweet as thanks fellas

ill give it a crack with the juice then. Thats a great idea about doing the small batches, cant believe i didnt think of it. I might buy another fermenter (as to not interupt my chrissy beer stock pile) and have a play with a bottle at a time of juice.

Is there much difference from say a bottle of apple juice using oztops to doing it myself in a fermenter? might just grab the oz tops if its the same sorta thing.

Never used the oztops but I believe they come with yeast as well as the top thingies you screw onto the juice bottle. If you don't like the oztops yeast you can always use a different one and just use the oztops tops to save you from having to buy fermenters.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Steve]

Oztops are great. Grab a 3litre berri juice, add yeast and put the lid on, ferment for a week, chill it and drink it. :icon_drunk:
Cheers
Steve

 

[manticle]

Is that 24.90 for converting 1 bottle of juice or does the kit do more?

 

[tez]

hahaha nah man i wouldnt be considering it if it did
i think its enough yeast for about 50 or 70 litres.. check it out manticle, oztops.com.au

Well i guess what im asking is... if i use oztops with the correct yeast on a bottle of apple juice, will that be apple cider?
Oz tops makes wine? is cider wine? haha i dont know anything... the mrs said she wants cider

 

[komodo]

Oztops kit comes with 2 yeast types, instructions, 2 low pressure caps suitable for a berri juice style container, 2 medium pressure PET bottle caps and 2 high pressure PET bottle caps.

Theres HEAPS of yeast to last you for ages.

The cider will be cider and alcoholic. BUT dont expect it to be super fizzy even with the high pressure caps. It actually makes a very refreshing beverage and I occasionally still put down a couple of PET bottles of juice with the oz tops even though I have a kegging setup. I think the simplicity of it is the key and I like the lower carbonation occasionally.
Basically it turns the bottle into a fermenting vessel but the airlock only opens once it reaches a certain pressure - the idea being that it forces some of the CO2 put out during fermentation back into the liquid. Works quite well.

 

[boingk]

+1 for oztops, thats how I started brewing my own. Good product, kindof a gateway item if you ask me haha.

Cheers - boingk

 

[EZE-09Z]

Tez,

that kit im doing seems to be ok but im not super keen on the taste. if i do another one i think ill be doing the juice bottle.

the kit is ok but i think it needs alot more sugar.

ill keg it up on the weekend and see how it goes.



Ernie


p.s the ginger beer at 2 weeks is brilliant

 

[tez]

Cool thanks fellas