SO, this is probably frowned upon here :P (bread yeast and store bought apple juice)

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Madera

Member
Joined
Aug 27, 2011
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
Location
Sacramento
I read about it on the internet and thought it would be fun to try..

Here's what I used:
64oz 100% apple juice
1 packet of rapidrise bread yeast(planned on 1/2 but ended up pouring it all in)
1.5cups table sugar

make an airlock essentially by runing co2 through a tube into water


it seemed to be working ok....till the foam I forgot about reading up on earlier started creeping up the tube and into the water :eek:

So now the tube is full of foam, the water is nice and murky, and the gas is not coming out in single bubbles, but instead, big bursts.

I raised the water well above the juice in hopes that the foam might not make it up the tube and would slide back down into the juice...but it didn't.

My big question is: Will this effect the final product? Am I losing a bunch of yeast in the foam? Can I wait for the foam to die down and rinse the tube and change the water with no ill effects(i.e. vinegar)?

If anyone is around right now, please help! :)

Also, I know bread yeast won't make a good hard cider, but is there any way I can make a decent hard cider with what I've got going?

And since I don't have any fancy equipment, is there any way I can store this to age it when I'm done(since I'm 90% sure it will not taste good) in hopes of bettering the final product?


Thank you ahead of time for the help!!!

Hopefully I don't mess this up bad enough to make me never want to try it again:p
 
hardcider826.jpg

Here is my setup if anyone was curious :)
 
Next time around, I will definitely use better quality yeast, and probably make my setup a little better.
This time around I basically read about it(I had read about it before, just hadn't actually done it) and drove to the store to get juice and yeast...not much preparation.
Also, if I rinse the tube, should I use vodka instead of water afterwards for the makeshift airlock like they recommend in that post?
 
woo! prison hooch!
heh... jk..

its gonna get you drunk.. thats for sure. but if you're looking for good flavor as well? mmmm not so much.

for some terminology...
you currently made a blow off tube. these work great when your dealing with ferments that might overfill your vessel capacity. but, instead of using water, you might want to use something like a starsan solution, or iodophor (psst go with the starsan) ... not need to rinse until the ferment is complete because its an enclosed system.. baddies cant get in as long as youve sterilized well.

tips: when your ferment is complete (no more bubbles for a while.. usually 3days to 2weeks-ish[estimate please dont flame]) youll probably want to crash cool. rop it down to just above freezing... that will drop a lot of the yeast out of suspension and make it taste a little better.

dont expect martinelli's apple goodness. this is probably going to taste like bad white wine with a harsh alcohol bite. its gonna get you faded .. and fast. i estimate ~8.5%abv but im a bit drunk myself so the math may be slightly off.

in the future: try and use a better yeast.. s04 or some sort of cider yeast that will accentuate fruitiness.

temp regulation is so key to any ferment... learn about the yeast and what it likes... ferment at that temp so you get good flavors, and not off, harsh ones.

if you can age it, itll taste better.... any wine (and thats basically what you made, apple wine) is going to taste better with a bit of aging.. it lets those alcohol esters mellow and the appley goodness come though.

.. making alcohol is easy. theyve been doing it for millennia... making great tasting alcohol can be a life long aspiration.
 
So the water that the foam is going into is not going to get nasty or anything?
could I maybe clamp the hose and change the water to vodka at least so it can help kill the bad stuff?

also, I was thinking..what if I used sugar water, then when it's done, mixed it with juice concentrate? would it taste ok? Has anyone tried that before?
 
Water as the bubbler is fine, however, don't put the water above the cider, or too far below the cider line if you can help it. Keep it even if possible.
The reason is due to pressure and gravity. You'll see this when you siphon the cider out using a tube. If you're not careful, or if the cider/foam slides back in (which normally is fine), it can try to draw water back through the tube.
This would be bad, usually since the water isn't a sterile item and can contaminate your cider which in turn could make it taste odd, or turn to vinegar.

The foam is fine, that's just protein, yeast and co2 that's causing it to foam up. If it stays in the cider, that's ok. If you can, get a long enough hose and have it going up initially so that the foam has less of a chance to leave the tube. The water could get nasty with the foam.. actually, the water will get nasty regardless of foam. Otherwise, just change the water every so often. The minor tube exposeure isn't that harmful since there's still co2 coming out and you're not pushing anything back through.

As mentioned, use better yeast. Otherwise, it sounds like a decent enough recipe.

Some people have fermented straight sugar water and add flavor later. I can't recall the country or what it's called... Swedish? FInnish? Danish?
 
up·on   /əˈpɒn, əˈpɔn/ Show Spelled[uh-pon, uh-pawn] Show IPA
preposition
1. up and on; upward so as to get or be on: He climbed upon his horse and rode off.
2. in an elevated position on: There is a television antenna upon every house in the neighborhood.
3. in or into complete or approximate contact with, as an attacker or an important or pressing occasion: The enemy was upon us and our soldiers had little time to escape. The Christmas holiday will soon be upon us and we have hardly begun to buy gifts. The time to take action is upon us.
4. immediately or very soon after: She went into mourning upon her husband's death.
5. on the occasion of: She was joyful upon seeing her child take his first steps.
 
Most have been answered but I'll put in my two cents.
First, I would always recommend a more suitable yeast for taste, and keep the temperature as close to the recommended level as possible.
I use store bought juice all the time, (fresh pressed is not an option here, just watch out for preservatives).
You have set up what beer brewers call a blow off tube, works great, just change out the water so it does not become nasty.
Cider is better aged for six months to a year before the taste really comes out. So start your pipe line now, and keep going larger and longer.
Look into washing yeast so you can buy something you like and making it stretch to where you don't mind spending the money.
Patience is key, and time will reward you.
Have fun, and enjoy your product.
 
We used to make it like that a very long time ago when I was just introduced to it (in the days of gopher) and got ok results. Brand of yeast actually makes a noticeable difference for this route. Personally I never liked the results with fliesch. red was better, and the best came from that brand that does the stone ground wheat pastas (sorry, can't think of the brand as I always associated them with their logo). I don't know what type of yeast strain it is but years ago anyway it was the only one that produced no off flavors to speak of. I saw some at the grocery store a few weeks ago so I know they still exist.

That said, wine yeast is very cheap and easily available. Unless I was doing it absurdly cheap and in a hurry I wouldn't choose that route again. From best I could tell tho the whole wheat producer yeast had the highest alcohol tolerance. Per brewtarget it would put it around 14-15% tolerance and the second batch and beyonds lees would produce the best results (maybe the less effective yeasts would die off?).
 
I made it like this before...

Apple juice from concentrate about 700g of sugar per one gallon.... And Hovis bread yeast.
After about four days fermenting, it was drinkable and around 5% /sweet
leave it a quick was allot strong and dry.


Here is the main thing i noticed, Don't bother letting it mature, it don't improve flavour at all!!

Just brew for a week.. or two and bottle and put in fridge then drink straight away!

Nice and cheap and veryy drunk!!
 
A cheap pack of dry wine yeast makes all the difference... there's really no good reason not to, IMO.
 
Thank all of you guys for the responses!
It is going to have been going for 6 days as of tonight, and there is still bubbles...just wondering if I should stop it early so it is sweeter, or if it will be bad either way and I might as well let it get as high of a % as possible. :p

Hopefully sometime soon I will be getting some supplies for brewing beer too! I've been reading stuff here and there and it sounds like it would be a fun new hobby. I also made a force carbonator out of a paintball Co2 tank..kinda wish I kept the packaging so I could remember what size fittings I used, as I couldn't find any tutorials on how to do that, I wouldn't have minded making one...cause it took a little creativity lol
 
If you stop it early with "Bakers" yeast you may find some pretty harsh notes in my experience.

Storage can be hard also. Back then I used mason jars cause I had tons of them and brewing was arguably illegal at the time so no LHBSs. If you go that route and you try to keep it sweet, make sure you don't tighten them (leave a gap even). Most of my "sweet" tended to have what I think of as a soured trash can smell that kind of overshadows any boosts to taste. This goes away as it goes dry and if you forget about it a couple months it is virtually non-existent.

Alternatively you can add sugar in batches til it overwhelms the yeast. I had much better results this way and less off tastes. If memory serves the hodgson (per brewtarget) seemed to fail around 11% abv assuming my estimate of the residual sweetness is right. Your mileage may vary of course so add in small batches (I went ~1/2 cup per addition per gallon) until you have a feel for your yeast.

Honestly I consider my results to have been approx equal to champagne yeast but tbf I don't tend to like champagne strains that I've tried.
 
I did a hard cider with brown sugar using bread yeast back in July. A week after I bottled it, it had carbed up nice but taste terrible! I forgot about it til this week and just tried one last night... World of a difference!! Crisp, just enough sweetness, and a nice caramel flavor from the brown sugar! Bread yeast works pretty darn well and I think a lot of the doubt comes from people who have never tried it
 
Just a quick question in this vein - I want to do something similar to this for fun - how much headroom should I leave and how much yeast should I use?
(I already read that 700grams of sugar per gallon - or 200grams per metric litre)

I will make 2 x 2L batches with different yeasts but everything else will be identical between batches.
Safale S-04 and Nottingham I think will be my yeasts - as long as my LHBS has them both in stock..

Also will use proper air-locks cos I already have them.. LOL
 
Back
Top