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Hard cider experiment
So I am super new to the homebrewing world, but very excited! I brewed a true brew Oktoberfest as my first batch 10 days ago and bottled it wednesday night. After doing some research I saw a lot of people talking about using the yeast cake from a previous batch and making a cider with it. So I tried this and brewed a hard cider, but wasn't sure exactly what I was doing so here is what I did and I welcome feedback!
I took 2 large 3 qt bottles of pure apple juice and simmered it on the stove. Added 1 cup of brown sugar, some cinnamon and nutmeg. Cooked it for a while. Then poored it directly into my fermenting bucket fresh after bottling the Oktoberfest. Right onto of the left over yeast and crap in the bottom. I added 3 cans of apple juice concentrate. And topped it off with water to make 2.5 gallons. Then capped the bucket and put the air lock on.
After a couple of hours it bubbling away ever 4 or 5 seconds. I don't know how or if this will come out but we will see! Any thoughts?
Sounds cool.
The only issue is whether the apple juice sources you used had any preservative in them. Most off the shelf stuff from the grocery store has potassium sorbates or things like that to prevent microbiological growth.
But if you pitched it on the entire yeast cake from a previous batch you should be OK as the huge huge cell count will overcome the preservative load in the apple juice and concentrates.
Good luck. Keep up posted of the results.
(and welcome to the site)
Sounds facisnating to me ...I recently did a half gallon experiment in a growler with apple juice and a stout yeast. Came out all right to my surprise ...nothing to write home about though. I best an octoberfest yeast cake would compliment a cider batch really well though.
I hope to see you post the end results.
Well I have finished the experiment and it went better than I hoped! I bottled it after about a week in the primary. I tasted it about a week an a half out and it was decent. It has a real apple beer taste. not very sweet, but not tart either. I would do this again for sure. As the weeks go on it doesn't taste as good as it did. So I am going to sit on the rest for a few months and see how it pans out over the long hall.
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