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Brewing cider with ready made apple juice
Surely someone out there has a recipe for ready made apple juice. Im tempted just to jump in with both feet, as there is a store here, thats selling 1 Litre of it for only 15pence, if I make a 20Litre batch, its only costing me £3.
All I want now is to find out how much champagne yeast to use and of course how much sugar. Not forgetting of course, do I need the apple juice to be a certain temperature, before adding the yeast?
Any one?
Dave.
From what I've read online about apple is to heat it up(optional) to boiling for about 10 minutes.
Cool to between 80-60 degrees and pitch yeast. Use a champagne yeast, depending on how much you are going to ferment you may need to make a starter culture.
You shouldn't need to add sugar since apple cider(juice) has it's own, natural sugar.
I'm new to homebrewing so you may take my advice, you may not.
I bought fresh apple cider and just used half a pack of champaign yeast and pitched it.
It smells good, taste test, it tasted more like a wine then cider, after moving to secondary, I added some brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon, right now I'm just letting it set in the secondary for at least another week. It does smell good though.
You may not want to take my idea though, like I said I'm a newb to homebrewing.
Had to read your post agin, the way I was told, apple juice makes apple wine, cider makes hard cider, that's how I understand it anyway, some one may post later to set me straight though.
One thing everyone agrees on, is it has to all natural, no preservatives, it won't allow the yeast to ferment the cider, it will just rot.
Marv.
i never realized that Cider was made with yeast and firmented... coming from an area that just squuzed apples and the let it age in a barrel It was amazing to see that such a benign product thats given to children is ferments close to a wine!
try doing a internet search for apple products I am sure someone out there has a recipe for making apple juice I usually just buy it because its so cheap in the states
I would try to find unpastuerized apple juice. You should pitch the yeast at room temps, about 70 - 75 degress F. I wouldn't boil the juice, as this will drive off some of the flavor. Also, I might reconsider the champagne yeast, as this will ferment extremely dry. Most ciders will ferment dry as it is, the champagne yeast will exaggerate this. Try a cider or sweet mead yeast. If not, you might look for a white wine yeast.
I'm going to have some dry cider, bummer.
Oh well, Will call it a learning experience.
Marv.
Marv. wrote:
I'm going to have some dry cider, bummer.
Oh well, Will call it a learning experience.
Marv.
Marv, I wouldn't worry about it too much. You can always add some lactose to it to sweeten it up, or you can sweeten each glass as you pour it. You can use flavorer syrups or similar to do this. At least this way you can make it as sweet as you want it when you want it. The disadvantage of making a sweet cider is that there is not a way to make it dryer, if you wanted it that way. But, using a cider or mead yeast should give you something pretty dry anyway. A champagne yeast will just take it step further.
How much sugar do you recommend using for this recipe if I decided I wanted it to be sweet and not relying on the apples for sweetener to give it a more sweet taste? Will this be a strong alcohol recipe?
If you want this to be sweet, you need to add a non-fermentable sugar, such as lactose or splenda. Do this after fermentation. If using lactose, I believe you would be looking to add about 2 lbs for a 5 gallon batch. Don't add corn or cane sugar or honey etc, as this will cause you to have an even dryer cider.
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