Beer Forum

It's apple season in Southern Illinois. I just pitched two vial of WLP775 into 5.7 gallons of local, flash-pasteurized cider pressed on 9/27. OG 1.050.

I am planning to follow the BYO article to produce a dry cider, a specialty cider and a strong cider. The next recipe will include 1.5 lbs of Belgian Candi Syrup (D2) I think and 1-2 cans of Oregon fruits blackberry puree.

I just started 10 gallons of cider. 5 Gallons of straight fresh pressed apple juice and 5 gallons of the same juice with 3/4 gallon of pureed blackberries from my back yard. Just basic ciders but we like them.

We brought Farnum Hill in to our meeting to speak about cider making. They produce some truly excellent ciders.

He gave us some really good tips, most importantly being that you should use cider apples. He said most eating apples used to make common cider give strange esters that he finds unpleasant. His suggested recipe for common cider is to use mostly golden delicious (the best in his opinion) and bitter to taste with some tannic crab apples. Of course he makes everything with champagne yeast, so that may change the ester profile you get from using common apples.

I'm sure he's right. I am just too lazy to do all that work for cider. We have a local orchard that makes an apple juice blend and I just ferment that. I just pour 5 gallons into my 6 gallon carboy, do the camden tablet thing and after 24 hours pitch a vial of White Labs English Ale yeast. I think I am just going to store it all in kegs this year, cuz I is just that lazy........

Yes, finish your cider with some crabapples if you can. The tannin helps to "preserve" that great apple taste. Another approach is to find some of the older style apples like Northern Spy. They are late apples and are perfect for dropping the pH of your cider some and that helps to "pop" that apple taste as well. Any "baking" apple should work too. Granny Smith's will work too, but they do not grow to well in NY. Washington state has the Granny's.

The problem with apples in general is that all the older apples that make great cider are being pulled out of the ground. The older apple styles trees were planted 40 trees per acre. Now the newer varieties like Gala, Empire, Honey Crisp are planted 400 trees per acre Yielding a larger crop.

Get to know your where your cider is being pressed. I am lucky that I live in apple country USA (Western NY) and I usually wait until the end of October when the Northern Spy and Golden Delicious are pressed.

I have used Champagne and/or beer yeast (even German Hef!). Keep the fermentation temp low (62-65) and you'll keep esters at bay. I am thinking of using a bret yeast this year to see if that works.

I have a cider underway too. I too just used 5 gallons of a cheap apple juice blend. Did my usual recipe with a couple cups of chopped raisins for the tannic acid and nutrients along with a couple pounds of turbinado sugar, boil briefly brought to a boil in a couple quarts of juice to dissolve the sugar and sanitize the raisins. Added a little pectic enzyme to counteract the bit of boiled juice. Had an extra pack of Wyeast Sweet Mead yeast sitting around so I used that this time.

Wayne

Our club has a cider run set up in a few weeks where a local orchard will press us a special extra sweet blend that will not be pasteurized for $7.75 a gallon.

I did a batch about 3 years ago and was not happy with the results so I'm not sure I'm going to do it again, but I didn't have any temperature control back then and left that cider on the yeast for 6+ months.

we'll see

San_Diego_Matt wrote:Our club has a cider run set up in a few weeks where a local orchard will press us a special extra sweet blend that will not be pasteurized for $7.75 a gallon.

I did a batch about 3 years ago and was not happy with the results so I'm not sure I'm going to do it again, but I didn't have any temperature control back then and left that cider on the yeast for 6+ months.

we'll see

Why pasteurize?