cider??

[lucas]

who has some good recipes? ive never made a hard cider, but i shure do love them.. anyway if anyone has a recipe they would love to share let me have it. and sense i cant wait to make a batch im probably not going to wait for the recipes and im just going to go off what i know... and when it turnes out to taste like a wet sock ill wish i would have waited..hahaha

[danno]

get some good, fresh pressed apple cider, add Narbonne dry yeast. (it's a wine yeast from Lavlin...)

that's it.

[fatboy570]

Last year I did a cider with 5 gal fresh pressed juice, 3 lb brown sugar,and cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg. Spices went in secondary. Turned out pretty good

[fatboy570]

Oops! Forgot the yeast. Red Star Cote des blancs with 2 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient

[lucas]

ok so i went ahead and made the cider and so far so good im going to be puting it into the secondary tomarrow ontop of some cinnamon anyway this is what i did.. i took 2 gal of fresh apple cider put into fermentor well not all of it i took 1/4 gal put in stockpot and warmed it upthen added 3 ibs of raw unfilterd honey stured that around for a minute to get it all fluid like and then let it cool for a minute or two and then dumped it into the fermentor and stered the everloving piss out of it (basically to airade it and to help it cool faster) then pitched the yeast, Safale S-04 an english style ale yeast i want more of an ale tast than a wine taste but thats it...

[stronk]

I hope you like dry ciders. Honey dries beer and cider up no end (it's virtually all fermentable, so you end up with honey aroma and more alcohol).

[lucas]

well like i sead i have never made a cider before and after two days had passed in the primary i decided to go down to the book store and do some research (what normal person would do first) and i what i learned was that the honey that i added to make the damn thing sweeter was actualy going to do the opposite and make a bit dryer... but such is life and thats wy i only did 2 gal....do you have a remedy for the dryness?? maybe something in the secondary?

[Dextolen]

Perhaps add a non-sugar sweetener like splenda at bottling?

[fatboy570]

In my last mead I let fermentation get good and complete then added Super Kleer to clear the mead real good. I then added some potassium sorbate to inhibit yeast , then added table sugar to backsweeten. Took about 2 lbs to get to taste. This same procedure should work with cider, I am going to do it to my latest batch of cider

[stronk]

Second the above post. But not the one above that; yeuch!

You'd have to force-carbonate it to get any fizz, though.

I suppose you could always try lactose (sugar derived from milk which is completely unfermentable).

[unkle bik]

Originally posted by fatboy570
In my last mead I let fermentation get good and complete then added Super Kleer to clear the mead real good.
I have never had to add any clarifiers to my meads.
Using champagne yeast and several rackings seemed to do the trick. Absolutely clear every time.

[fatboy570]

Ive never used champagne yeast, just wine yeast, in my ciders. Will the champagne yeast ferment further? My latest cider, with the above wine yeast, went from about 1.076 to about 0.996-7. This cider had 5 gal juice with 3 lb honey instead of sugar. I plan to make another batch this winter, just wondered if the champagne yeast will bump the alcohol content or if Im fine with what I using now. My current alcohol content usually runs about 10-11%

[generalzonzo]

Just made my first six gallon batch of Cider. Used 6 gallons of fresh, sweet cider from my local orchard. Added 5 lbs of clover honey then sterilized using Campden tabs for 3 days. Added my English Cider Yeast WLP775 starter last evening around 5pm. Today it is going strong, very little foaming. OG - 1.075 with >80% attenuation from the yeast should be nice and dry.

[fatboy570]

Never used the campden tabs, although Ive got some. I think they are mainly used to kill off the wild yeast in the air and drive away off flavors. though my ciders have always come out good. Latest batch was a little sweet due to judgemental errors from sampling too freely, but good nonetheless. I have discovered that honey will dry cider out quite a bit, but add k-sorbate to inhibit further yeast activity, then sweeten to taste with table sugar.