gregkeller

Recipes 

Ok, i've got an oktoberfest party coming up on october 20th. That's a little over a month from now. I have got 10 gallons of oktoberfest ready to go, but have been toying with the idea of a cider. Is there any way i can do a cider that will taste really good in less than a month? I can keg and force carb. I was thinking of something with just juice, no added sugar to keep the gravity low. Fresh pressed juice from a local cider mill (haven't even looked into this, not sure if juice is even available yet, i guess that could totally kill the whole idea), a simple ale yeast fermented cool so it's nice and crisp, and cold crash it to halt fermentation with a little residual sugar left.

So can it be done?

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BierKeller Brewery
Keg #1 - Vanilla Pecan Porter
Carbing - Munich Alt
On Deck- Berliner Weiss
Fermenting- DIPA
Next to be brewed- Saison

irchowi

Recipes 

Probably. I'm in the process of brewing apfelwein right now and edwort says it's supposedly ready in 5 weeks. But then a lot of people says its not good until at least 6 months.

Like you said, doing a low gravity cider without any added sugar would be your best bet so that it would require less aging.

klnosaj

Recipes 

Apfelwein IS NOT apple cider. Totally different yeast mean totally different products and totally different fermentation processes. I recently used White Labs WLP775 English Cider Yeast on a batch of fresh pressed apple cider with enough corn sugar added to give me an OG of 1.046. 2 weeks in primary followed by one week in secondary to aid clearing and it's good to go with a FG of 1.006--nice and crisp with enjoyable sweetness. This stuff is so easy to make, and so easy to make so that it tastes great, that I wish I'd started years ago.

Anyway, best of luck!