This summer brought plenty of apples in our three kinds of apple trees. I had the luxury of tasting them all and deciding on the mix to have juiced.
And nailed it! Last time I used mostly the sweetest ones and the cider had very little apple taste in it. This one is very much apple tasting. Primary fermentation went on for over three weeks, and the result is bone dry, just like my type 1 diabetic ass likes it.
Also in the 23 l batch: 1 kg of malt (Simpsons Premium English Cara, Viking Cara Pale and Simpsons Maris Otter) to feed micronutrients to the yeast, 1 dl dark sugarcane syrup and 1 dl white sugar in the yeast starter. Yeast was fresh ‘sahti’ yeast, not really showing its banana character though.
Next time: more malt and taking the time to carefully boil down the volume of apple juice a bit. Hopefully next year, but one can never count on getting apples…
We used to buy our cider from the Dicken’s family. /s
Great! Seriously, any and all homebrewing is appreciated, even kilju (and even that can be brewed to be “dry”).
But sorry I need to nitpick…
I just love Cidre from France which is being sold in e.g. Lidl around this time - and I always thought it’s only ingredient is apple.
Does anybody have experience with making it themselves that way?
We also have plenty of apples right now…
Related:
As others have said – there’s nothing more needed than apples and the yeast, but both myself and the yeast like malted grain (probably for different reasons though :D ) so what I’ve done is used up some leftovers and made a small amount of beer wort to go with the ferment. Beer wort is loaded with all the nutrients yeast need to thrive, so it aids the ferment. One could use some yeast nutrient product as well, but this keeps it free of ‘additives’.
The syrup and sugar are really trace amounts in 23 liters, I add them to make the starter go brr. It’s just become a habit to have the syrup in there and I can’t leave it out now. Goes in all of my beer runs too :)
Enjoy!
If it’s just apple juice, then you don’t need nutrient. Just yeast and juice.
You’ll have a lower ABV, and you probably won’t be able to bottle carb.
You might also have a harder time as a homebrewer creating and maintaining ideal temperature and assuring that there is enough nitrogen and sugars. But that’s home brewing.
If it’s just apple juice, then you don’t need nutrient. Just yeast and juice.
Yes, exactly.
You’ll have a lower ABV, and you probably won’t be able to bottle carb.
I’m sorry I didn’t understand any of that. Could you explain both parts?
ABV: alcohol by volume. Assuming you’re European - but as an American, when I visited Germany, I found it was something yinz cared about less, presumably because most beers were 4.5% or 6% if it was heavy. American beer culture is much wilder, with lighter style beers ranging from 4-8% and the heavier as 6-15% sometimes as high as 20. Be careful, lol.
Bottle carbing is a method of carbonating in a bottle
ABV is the alcohol content.
Bottle carb is having it carbonated (fizzy) in a bottle.
Sounds delicious.
Nice!
I’m a week into primary on my first cider. Excited to make something tasty for the fall weather whenever it arrives.
I’m a big fan of pectinase, for freeing up those “flavor molecules.” Did you use it? I’m hopeful, but our apples may be slim pickin’s this year. We’ll see how it goes.
Nope, as I’m going for the minimum of added anything as a bit of an ethos in my brewing. Enzymes are really cool things though. Might try pectinase someday, but evaporating some water to boost flavour is certainly the first thing to try.
Good luck with the apple harvest!
Thanks, we’ll need it this year. Are you heating the juice to evaporate? Pulling a vacuum? Just curious.
I was thinking of first boiling some juice and getting a taste of how it tastes afterwards. If I like the effect, then ditch the sulfite, heat in a wide kettle to lose a bit of volume, then a quick boil to sanitise…
If the boil test makes it worse, perhaps just keep it on a bit of heat to evaporate. Vacuum would be nice (could be done in my fermenter), but how to get the vapour out seems a bit of a challenge…?
