Ah, 32 big bottles of hard cider. I can't wait to drink it but alas I must wait at least 6 months, maybe a year. This is the hard part. Watching last years supply dwindle knowing there won't be any more for awhile.

Dave

Interesting. I've never tried hard cider before. Tell me, what does it taste like? Spiked apple cider? Is it bitey? Bitter? Sweet? Tart? What alcoholic beverage does it most closely resemble?

Hard cider is a great little drink to make because it requires very little investment in equipment. Basically you get a carboy, pour 5 gallons of cider in, and throw a dollar packet of yeast after it. Two months later you boil a little corn sugar to mix with the cider, fill your bottles (empty beer bottles) and cap them. Very simple, very affordable.

As for the taste, I'd say it can vary but mine is a carbonated apple juice with a slight alcohol flavor. The apple flavor is muted as a lot of the sugar is converted to alcohol. I keep mine below 5% so it is a good balance.

You can do a lot of things to vary the flavor. You can add applejuice at the bottling time to sweeten it, or you can do a mixture of apple juice and other types of juice. You can also put in some honey which makes it ever so smooth and sweet. Or you can let it sit in the carboy for a few more months and have a "still" product like wine.

So your investing is something like this:
$20 carboy (two is ideal but not necessary)
$15 bottle capper
$2 bag of caps
$5 bottle of iodine for sanitation
$2 bottling straw
$2 faucet for bottling bucket

Dave



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2006 01:33AM by davemchine.

I have been promising my wife and her best friend that i would make them some. maybe this will be the year.

Ever made it with champagne yeast? I'm told it works well.

I have tried champagne yeast and it certainly works. It makes more of a dry product, that's why I use the ale yeast instead. It's all in your preference.

Dave

BC Growers in Canada makes a Macintosh Apple Cider that is REALLY tasty.

Quote
Racer X
BC Growers in Canada makes a Macintosh Apple Cider that is REALLY tasty.

Wouldn't that be iCider?

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Da Good Life

Dave, I have that book. Glad there are other cider lovers out there. Always wanted to make my own cider since my wife and I really enjoy it. Luckily I have a really good local cider company nearby [www.acecider.com]

So do you press your own apples or do you buy the juice? Can you just use store bought juice or do you need fresh/pure stuff?

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earache

From an online cookbook:
Hard Apple Cider Recipe #2714
4 1/2 liters fresh apple juice (no preservatives)
1/2-1 lb sugar (not more than 2 lbs)
1/2 teaspoon pectic enzyme powder
1 teaspoon acid blend
1/4 teaspoon grape tannin
1/2 teaspoon yeast energizer
2 campden tablets
1 packet all purpose wine yeast
10-16 servings 1 gallon Change size or US/metric
Change to: gallon US Metric
2784 hours

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Da Good Life

I've tasted $250 champagne, and home-grown slightly fermented apple cider still beats it for me.

Another method: grab your apples from some tree. Run them through a juicer with no screen in (so everything goes through, nothing is screened out). Line a large bucket or bowl with the material from a clean old T-shirt (or some kind of cloth like that). Grab the corners of the cloth and let the juice fall out, squeezing as you go.

Bottle the resulting juice, leaving the cap not too tight. Store in a cool place (basement works well) for a week or two. It turns fizzy on its own. To stop the fermenting, place it in the fridge or freezer.

This doesn't work for large amounts because there's not enough control. But for small runs of 4-10 gallons, damn, it's the best tasting drink I've ever drunk.

Little health factoid: apple juice contains one of the highest amounts of malic acid. Malic acid is one of the best liver detoxifiers ever found. Doing a few days of nothing but apple juice during the fall each year is a great tonic, especially if you feel any of the symptoms of a toxic or sludgy liver, such as general malaise, brain fog, lack of get-up-and-go, many digestive problems, allergic responses, low blood sugar, high cholesterol, psoriasis, eczema, allergies, constipation, chronic bad breath (the kind where no amount of teeth brushing fixes), itchy skin, excessive sweating. In Eastern/Oriental medicine, the liver is in charge of the smooth flow of emotions. Road rage is a great example of a liver in need of a break.

Even for those that doubt anything related to liver "cleansing", I've never met anyone who doesn't feel the difference. A cleansed liver is a felt sensation. It's akin to feeling the weight of the world come off your shoulders. Quite an experience.

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I have used store bought juice and I have squeezed my own, both produce good results. In the fall you can probably find a harvest festival nearby and get some fresh squeezed juice.

I would recommend against the campden tablets mentioned above though. They smell terrible and the smell doesn't necessarily leave the cider as much as you'd like.

What tuqqer is talking about is the way our grandparents used to make hard cider. There will be yeast on the apples when they get squeezed so you don't really have to add yeast BUT it's not necessarily the kind of yeast that will produce the best results. For $1 you can buy a packet of dry yeast and ensure a good flavor. Here is exactly how I do it:

1. Sanitize carboy and airlock with an iodine solution
2. pour in 5 gallons of apple juice, substitute 1/2 gallon of another kind of juice if you are adventuresome.
3. throw in a $1 packet of yeast and put the airlock on top. I use vodka in the airlock but lots of people just use water.
4. wait 3-4 weeks and siphon to 2nd carboy (also sanitized).
5. wait 3-4 weeks and siphon to a bottling bucket (sanitized) along with a cup of corn sugar that has been boiled in a small amount of water.
6. using the bottling bucket and a bottling straw, fill all your sanitized bottles and cap them. Stick them in a cool place and wait at least 3 months before sampling, i wait at least 6-12 months.

There are lots of variations on this but this is how I do it. It's simple and gives you a great product. The best cider I ever tried had honey added in the carboy during fermentation but that adds to the cost so I haven't done it yet.

Dave

Damn. All this talk is making me want to get out my bottles. My mouth is watering in preparation.

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Now you are making me want to do a road trip up into Vermont. There is a maker of hard cider and related products there that is quite good. Been a couple of years since I last went, will have to make sure they are still there.

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Quote
tuqqer
Little health factoid: apple juice contains one of the highest amounts of malic acid. Malic acid is one of the best liver detoxifiers ever found. Doing a few days of nothing but apple juice during the fall each year is a great tonic, especially if you feel any of the symptoms of a toxic or sludgy liver, such as general malaise, brain fog, lack of get-up-and-go, many digestive problems, allergic responses, low blood sugar, high cholesterol, psoriasis, eczema, allergies, constipation, chronic bad breath (the kind where no amount of teeth brushing fixes), itchy skin, excessive sweating. In Eastern/Oriental medicine, the liver is in charge of the smooth flow of emotions. Road rage is a great example of a liver in need of a break.

Even for those that doubt anything related to liver "cleansing", I've never met anyone who doesn't feel the difference. A cleansed liver is a felt sensation. It's akin to feeling the weight of the world come off your shoulders. Quite an experience.

Tuqqer, this is interesting. When you do this yourself, do you go through the step-by-step method with epsom salts, olive oil, etc.? Or do you just drink a lot of apple juice? Please elaborate.

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[picasaweb.google.com] [www.flickr.com]

Don, I wrote an e-book a few years ago on a variety of liver flushes that I've done over the decades. It's part of the whole program I promote, but I placed it in a unlocked folder for MacResourcers. You can get it here. ( [www.howhealthworks.com] ) It's a PDF and set up for printing. About 15 pages I think.

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thanks, tuqqer. that is interesting stuff. i plan to try it.

Hard Cider?


Dickens Cider!
[www.catsprn.com]



=wr=

Man, I haven't made hard cider in about a decade. The last batch I made was abtly called "skull Buster." It was the smoothest stuff I'd ever made, and you had to be careful because if you weren't paying attention the alcohol would really sneak up on you. The damned thing packed a mule's kick for a hangover though, and hence the name "Skull Buster."

I might even have a final bottle stashed away someplace, that is if it hasn't eaten through the bottle!

I've been threatening to get the brewing equipment out of moth balls now for about the last year. Perhaps I should as I rather do miss it.

outcast

If you ferment at too high of temperatures you will get the headache problem. Try to keep it below 70 degrees if possible. Most people ferment in their basement.

Dave

I used to brew my own beer, bot with a bonanza of windfall apples and a girlfriend (now wife) who only drank cider, I brewed up a couple of 5 gallon batches of cider. I used wine yeast, and decanted into a 5 gallon plastic barrel with a tap on thew bottom. It was the easiest stuff to brew, but somehow something always destroyed my carefully laid plans- both times I ended up with a very drinkable brew, but certainly no liver de-toxifier; probably 9% alcohol (or more), and terribly drinkable. Initial strong taste of apples, slight alcohol aftertaste, but eminently quaffable. From what I remember, we just crushed and boiled a sack of apples, added a load of raisins (apples do not provide all the required yeast nutrients), some lemon juice, some white sugar, and the wine yeast. Cheap and fun!

cheers

scot