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anybody out there enjoy making hard apple cider? please respond
I was looking for intelligent conversation on the art of making quality hard cider. I ve been doing it for three years.
I started 30 years ago while at university in Ontario. The apples came off end September to early October and both fresh cider and establishments to press your apples were available. Beer was almost $6 for a 24 case (!!!) so students were willing to steal an airlock from the chemistry lab and wait a couple of weeks or more for nature to create the "elixir of environmental enhancement".
It was generally bad, $6 wasn't that bad and I didn't make it again til this year when my apple trees produced more apples than the family could chew down.
Amazingly, or not, the past 15 years' skills from brewing beer have created a couple of batches of cider that are, after a month in bottle, achieving similar raves from cider affectionadoes as the beer does from the barley drinkers.
Two pieces of advice from the cider mill were given and followed and I would apreciate your comments;
a)Use multiple apple varieties.
b)If you have access to crab apples, cherish the source and add up to 20%
Well my crabs were just about done and I might have 5% in one batch.
A third point for comment or discussion;
Yeast - I did one with a high end local ale yeast and the second with dry champagne yeast. considering the variables in apple mix between the two batches, they are different, I like the champagne batch better but there isn't a lot to go one way or the other with next year.
Is there considered to be a significant advantage to on eyeast or another/
Thanks
Biss
I'm so glad to see this conversation come up. I just started this year and it was my re-entry to brewing in general. If I knew the amount of time it took, I would have chosen to do a beer first and then while that was aging in the bottle I would have gone back for the cider. Anyway, my basement keeps about 64 degrees so the Lalvin EC-1118 is a sweetheart for me. I added extra fermentables by suggestion of my LHBS proprietor. I added 2 lbs. each of honey and brown sugar. The potential for alcohol content was about 10.25% ABV. I will NOT do this in the future. I want to drink 22+ oz. in the evening and not get wasted.
I don't know if this is the right thread to ask my question, but I'm at almost 8 weeks and fermentation is good and finished. I've racked twice (probably only needed once). Should I continue to bulk age or go ahead and put it in the bottles? Any suggestions from anyone with experience in the area would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the note on the Lalvin ec-1118 yeast.
While waiting for an edudite reply on the buk aging, here is my barb - - Bottle now!
mind you- what size are you bottling? - 500ml? 750ml? ( pint?,26er?) 340/12oz don't add anything beyond simple conditioning for either beer or mead in my extensive/minimal respectively experience but 750ml bottle and bigger do mature.
Bulk is a relative term. Advice from vintners, in the Niagara Region and way back in the past in the Alsace and the Badischer region of Germany, was nothing is to be gained with less than 500 litres!
biss
hardciderman wrote:
I was looking for intelligent conversation on the art of making quality hard cider. I ve been doing it for three years.
It's great to know you've lasted doing apple cider for 3 years. For sure, you have lots of ideas in doing it. Are you successful in doing it?
On the Lalvin EC-1118, I wasn't exactly clear on why I love it. High attenuation and alcohol tolerance to 18% (not important here), it has an absolutely huge temperature range where it will ferment (39-95 F), and it is generally neutral flavor-wise. I have heard of malolactic fermentation and that it is sometimes beneficial in making hard cider. Here is something I saw while looking up the specifics on the yeast.
It is not, however, tolerant of concurrent malolactic fermentation.
What the heck is malolactic fermentation? Is it beneficial? What effect does it have on the finished product?
Oh yeah, to finish the other discussion, I'm bottling in a combination of 12 oz. and 22 oz. bottles. Was that a typo when you said 500L? Did you mean to say 500mL? I don't think I'll be doing any 500L batches, so I'll bottle now if so.
Great thread! Thanks.
JD
rtbiss wrote: b)If you have access to crab apples, cherish the source and add up to 20%
Well my crabs were just about done and I might have 5% in one batch.
I've got some old crab trees next to my apples, but how do I tell when they are ripe, and how do I pick them? This year, my first, I shook the apples down limb by limb, but I couldn't get the crabapples to fall this way. trying to hand pick even 5% of the apple volume would take forever...
Get a stick and knock them off or hire some mexicans to do the work for you if you have a big farm people will come pick for 8hr or less
Well, I finally bottled the cider last night and tasted again. I still had the yeast flavor. I'm not sure what I might have done wrong, but if I can't fix it, I don't think I'd do cider annually.
The yeast flavor is nasty. I drank 2 gallons of it like that and over time it aged and got better.It took at least 2 weeks for that taste to leave.
I have never been able to brew a batch of cider that tasted like apples. They all taste like hot alcohol. even when i use low alcohol ale yeast. All my batches were cloudy. I have some bottles from about a year ago that still have not cleared up an still taste like hot alcohol. Anyway I might abandon the cider ship and free up my carboys for more beer.
ID
I brewed some cider last year, it came out tasting super alcoholy, but cleared up pretty well. I brewed some more cider this year, didn't add any extra sugar, (og was 1.074!) it doesn't taste too bad, not overly alcoholy, but is still pretty green.
-ID what kind of apple juice/cider have you been using, and have you added sugar to it? The first batch that came out really alcoholy I used a champagne yeast that left it super dry, the last batch I used some dry ale yeast that left it moderately sweet.
I find that the best way to avoid the hot alcohol flavors in cider is to ferment at pretty low temps. I ferment mine in my basement during the late fall and into winter and end up somewhere in the upper 50s/lower 60s F. I typically use the sweet mead yeast from Whitelabs (WLP720), which tends to stop fermentation around 11.8% ABV. To ensure retention of the apple flavors in cider I will either add sugar (white or brown) to the cider so that the 11.8% abv is reached but still leaving some residual sugar in the cider. Since all the sugars in cider are 100% fermentable you can easily reach a FG of 0.996 resulting in a flavorless beverage if the OG isn't high enough. Cheers!
I've had good luck, no alcohol heat, using Lavin D-47.
Then back sweeten, add Potassium Sorbate & force carb.
Also, I don't add sugar to the cider, so I'm usually starting around 1.050 - 60
Instead of adding sugar try adding honey and make it a cyser. Just did one the finished at 1.000 with us-05 but still has some residual apple flavor. First time Ive made it with an ale yeast and it tastes pretty good. The aroma is a bit funny but I did add cinnamon, orange peel and oak.
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