So about a week ago I brewed my first cider. I'm still a bucket brewer and am pretty broke in general. I picked up some very fresh apple "cider" juice in Hendersonville, NC. 3gal. of a blend of red delicious, jonagold, fuji, crispin and a few others. I added a gal. of water that I dissolved a cup of brown sugar in and steeped a vanilla bean and 2 cinnamon sticks for 30 min at 150. I fermented with Lalvin EC-1118 Champagne yeast (2 packs). Also added pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient. Added more nutrient after fermentation slowed ~36 hours. All signs of fermentation stopped at ~72 hours. Now it's been in the primary bucket for a week after fermentation stopped.

What I'm looking for in this cider is a nice sparkling dry cider. I don't want to introduce any more flavors into what I already have. So I'm not looking at adding any oak. Clean apple flavor with a hint of the vanilla and cinnamon.

Now you're caught up. My questions are: do I need to rack it into another bucket and age it out for a while? How long am I looking at aging it? Can I put it directly from primary into bottles and age it that way?

Thanks my networks

McD

If you think your cider is done. Bottle it and age it in your bottles. Aging anything for along period of time in a bucket will allow for O2 to seep into your cider through the bucket walls.

In general, I make 5 gallons of cider this way:

Go to my local cider press.

Grab (5) 1 gallon jugs

pour them into a clean bucket or carboy

i pour half of each gallon cider into the carboy, then cap the gallon jug, shake the jug which adds O2 and then pour the rest of the foamy 1 gallon jug into the carboy. repeat for each gallon jug.

add your yeast

2-3 weeks later I keg the cider and let it age in the keg.

pure apple cider will always give you a 1.050 +/- .001 unless you add sugar to the cider

Take a hydrometer/taste sample. If you are shooting for a dry cider, make sure that what you have hits that. Cider will generally finish out very low as there aren't a whole lot of dextrins or more complex sugars to provide residual sugars. Based on your yeast strain and process, I'd imagine that you are pretty well fermented and probably ready to package, but never hurts to check first.