PrincessOfWails
Member
Hello!
I live in a neighborhood that was once an apple orchard so each house has at least one apple tree in the yard. I happen to have 4 very productive trees. My neighbors hate the mess they leave and have offered their apples to me as long as I pick them and take them away.
I have 2 macintosh and 2 golden delicious trees, and the neighbors have the same varieties in their yards. 2 years ago we picked, pressed and fermented them and ended up with 25 gallons of cider!
It was a decent first attempt. We pressed the apples, added sterilization tablets, added honey to raise the potential to about 10% and used champagne yeast. It ended up being so dry that we added a couple of lbs of honey back into it to make it not so painfully dry, but much of the apple flavor was gone and it was more like a wine a cyser.
We are going to make another batch this year, but we want to make it awesome this time! We want to keep more of the apple flavor and use a different yeast so it can be carbonated and lighter, although we don't want a sweet cider, more in the Strongbow vein.
Does anyone have any suggestions of what to do. We don't have kegging capacity.
Thanks for any input!
Wails
I live in a neighborhood that was once an apple orchard so each house has at least one apple tree in the yard. I happen to have 4 very productive trees. My neighbors hate the mess they leave and have offered their apples to me as long as I pick them and take them away.
I have 2 macintosh and 2 golden delicious trees, and the neighbors have the same varieties in their yards. 2 years ago we picked, pressed and fermented them and ended up with 25 gallons of cider!
It was a decent first attempt. We pressed the apples, added sterilization tablets, added honey to raise the potential to about 10% and used champagne yeast. It ended up being so dry that we added a couple of lbs of honey back into it to make it not so painfully dry, but much of the apple flavor was gone and it was more like a wine a cyser.
We are going to make another batch this year, but we want to make it awesome this time! We want to keep more of the apple flavor and use a different yeast so it can be carbonated and lighter, although we don't want a sweet cider, more in the Strongbow vein.
Does anyone have any suggestions of what to do. We don't have kegging capacity.
Thanks for any input!
Wails