Caramel Apple Hard Cider

I am 10 days in and sill getting activity in the airlock, a bubble every few seconds. I'm not going to take another gravity reading for a week or so.

All carbed up. Going to stovetop pasteurize later today when the kiddo takes his nap

Super quick ?

I am pasterizing right now and I have 6 bombers. should they stay in the water longer, if so how much longer

Okay so on Friday I checked the SG which was at 1.009 (down from 1.064) and so I decided the time had arrived! So I went to get campden tabs and realized I had bought powdered potassium metabisulfite. So now to learn all about this substance and how to convert it.

After finally doing some math and consulting some pages I found that to kill all cultured yeast in apple juice which has a PH of about 3.3ish I should try and put enough in to get it to 50 PPM. 1/8 teaspoon of my Pot. Meta. came out to 100 ppm for each gallon, so I needed 1/16 teaspoon per gallon for 50 ppm. So I needed roughly 5/16 teaspoon of the powdered stuff for my sauce. I put it in and let it sit for a day.

Saturday I mixed my syrup and my FCAJ and my apple cider and bottled and man oh man was it delicious! I can't wait to see how it tastes by Christmas!

Great recipe mike, can't wait to throw another batch in!

Just bottled mine and i already see the separation of the cinnamon and syrup.
Does this eventually blend in or does it just float around? The taste is great. Thanks for the recipe

Ok so I turned into that guy that let this carb too long and ended up with all gushers. Where I went wrong was using WL 775 English Cider Yeast. This yeast has a very high floculation rate and so I got very little yeast in my bottling bucket because it was all clumped up at the bottom of the carboy when I racked to secondary. I talked to one of the lab rats at WL and he said he thought there would probably still be enough yeast in suspension to get the job done, but that it might take a couple weeks or longer. So by day 6 when the plastic soda bottles were still compressable I didn't pay attention for a day and a half ... and BOOM! That yeast took off like a bat out of hell over the last 36 hours.


So I get home from work today and grab a plastic bottle and couldn't compress it at all. I give it a turn and sure enough, it starts spewing all over. I then pop a glass bottle and yep, it starts coming out the top. They weren't geisers by any means, but they all came up over the top. I know the warning said not to try and pasteurize if they were gushers, but I wanted to see what would happen. so I put 10 bottles in hot tap water and put them on the flame. In the mean time I sanitized my bottling bucket and began popping all the tops and pouring about half the cider back into the bucket. After all the bottles were opened I then immediately refilled them and capped them again. I know there's plenty of yeast and sugar in there to get them carbing up again ... and I will pay much closer attention this time around.

My question(s) is this.

1) The 10 I pasteurized did so successfully, no bombs, no blown caps, nothing. (I put them in the turkey cage so they were about an inch off the bottom - not directly on the bottom / flame). I brought the water up to 190, then turned the flame off and they actually sat there for a couple hours because I had to get other things done. I'm sure those yeasties are good and dead, but will the bottles still be gushers when I open them since the carb level was high prior to pasteurizing?

2) I put 2 bottles in the fridge, no pasteurizing, no recapping. When these are chilled will they gush as well since they went into the fridge as gushers, or will the chill settle them down?

4) Will the recapped bottles and cider still be just as good as before? I did sanitize everything so it's just a matter of letting them recarb, right?

3) Has anyone done this pasteurizing method and had any bottle bombs afterward? It seriously worries me to do this and then put them on the shelf with the rest of my brews and have a couple active yeasts still doing work, then boom when I'm least expecting it.

Thanks for the amazing thread, I have gotten a lot of information from reading( some skimming lol)it. I actually used the caramel recipe to save my last batch that was really dry and tart. For my current batch I followed this recipe with the exception of using cane sugar and Redstar Champagne yeast which I have used before. I used the recommended amount of yeast nutrient but today which is the second day it smells horribly of rhino farts. Should I add more yeast nutrient? Not worry? thoughts?

This thread is pretty awesome.

I made this and bottled it yesterday. I do have one question, it looks like the caramel sauce never really mixed well in this batch and is now floating in ribbons at the top of the bottles. Does anyone know if it will eventually blend in? I'm hoping when I end up pasturizing it will mix in.

EDIT:
Ended up pasteurizing last night in the dishwasher, had no bottles that exploded, and the syrup mixture was blended in this morning, checked the temperature halfway through the process, and the bottles were at 142 degrees Fahrenheit for 50 minutes. I did this after about 33 hours after capping.

I've lost approximately 25% of my regular bottles due to explosion while pasteurizing. Next up is the long necks and then bombers.

ajandrs said:

My question(s) is this.

1) The 10 I pasteurized did so successfully, no bombs, no blown caps, nothing. (I put them in the turkey cage so they were about an inch off the bottom - not directly on the bottom / flame). I brought the water up to 190, then turned the flame off and they actually sat there for a couple hours because I had to get other things done. I'm sure those yeasties are good and dead, but will the bottles still be gushers when I open them since the carb level was high prior to pasteurizing?

2) I put 2 bottles in the fridge, no pasteurizing, no recapping. When these are chilled will they gush as well since they went into the fridge as gushers, or will the chill settle them down?

4) Will the recapped bottles and cider still be just as good as before? I did sanitize everything so it's just a matter of letting them recarb, right?

3) Has anyone done this pasteurizing method and had any bottle bombs afterward? It seriously worries me to do this and then put them on the shelf with the rest of my brews and have a couple active yeasts still doing work, then boom when I'm least expecting it.

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First off, I agree that you gotta watch this stuff. I had the exact same issue with the Notty...4 days, no problem. Day 5 I had Cider 'nades.

1) Yes, they will still gush. I had some that I had to open over the course of 15 minutes to gradually let out the pressure and not lose prescious cider. Bottle cap released a bit, let settle, release, settle....it was worth it in the end though.

2) They will still gush but LESS than if they were warm.

4) I think you'd be just fine and I like how you did that. I will remember that for the future!

3) (how many ciders did you have before numbering these questions) I sorta had that issue. None blew but I had issues POST pasteurizing while they were cooling. I didn't have issues after they were on the shelving though.

I finished pasteurizing last night. I didn't have any bottle bombs with the longnecks or bombers. It leads me to believe I had some weak regular bottles. I opened the first one tonight and tried it. It reminds me of champagne

pwortiz said:

First off, I agree that you gotta watch this stuff. I had the exact same issue with the Notty...4 days, no problem. Day 5 I had Cider 'nades.

1) Yes, they will still gush. I had some that I had to open over the course of 15 minutes to gradually let out the pressure and not lose prescious cider. Bottle cap released a bit, let settle, release, settle....it was worth it in the end though.

2) They will still gush but LESS than if they were warm.

4) I think you'd be just fine and I like how you did that. I will remember that for the future!

3) (how many ciders did you have before numbering these questions) I sorta had that issue. None blew but I had issues POST pasteurizing while they were cooling. I didn't have issues after they were on the shelving though.

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Haha, I had a decent amount of cider at the point of numbering those questions!

Well here's where I'm at a day later. I opened one of the recapped plastic soda bottles after work and it foamed up about a quarter of an inch. Wow, only took 24 hours to get it back to where it needed to be. So I popped a glass bottle and no foaming, but carb level was good. 6 hours later now that everyone's asleep I just started to pasteurize the rest of the batch.

The bottles that I did pasteurize last night are great. No gushing, and good, high carb level. The ones I put in the fridge last night are the same, no gushers, just good, high carbed cider.

So what did I learn? I think I jumped the gun after seeing the gushers and should have just pasteurized the whole batch instead of all the work of uncapping and refilling. The bottles I either pasteurized or chilled both turned out great, so next time around I won't let a little gushing worry me too much. And again they weren't geysers, just foamed over the top.

I just pastureized my remaining bottles and lost 3 of my 40 oz bottles they blew in the pot boom boom boom..... Why would they blow inthe water 15 min in

2 days and theres slight carbonation will check again tonight and again tomorrow around 1 i bet ill be pasturizing by tomorrow afternoon. I dont mind checking often because i drink the bottle and it tastes good carbed or not lol

Harrod said:

This thread is pretty awesome.

I made this and bottled it yesterday. I do have one question, it looks like the caramel sauce never really mixed well in this batch and is now floating in ribbons at the top of the bottles. Does anyone know if it will eventually blend in? I'm hoping when I end up pasturizing it will mix in.

EDIT:
Ended up pasteurizing last night in the dishwasher, had no bottles that exploded, and the syrup mixture was blended in this morning, checked the temperature halfway through the process, and the bottles were at 142 degrees Fahrenheit for 50 minutes. I did this after about 33 hours after capping.

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Alright, Harrod, you have convinced me to try this dishwasher method for the next batch. Question: were bottles place on both levels or just the top or just the bottom?

Thanks!

Thanks so much for sharing this. My wife does not drink much beer and this is perfect. . . .

Best,

Scott

Disaster! I opened a bottle and it tastes okay but it smells like rotten eggs and apple cider mixed together! I don't know if it's from the potassium metabisulfite or what but is there any fix??? Thanks guys.

I made this and gave a few bottles away but the responses have not been good.

mikeslag said:

Disaster! I opened a bottle and it tastes okay but it smells like rotten eggs and apple cider mixed together! I don't know if it's from the potassium metabisulfite or what but is there any fix??? Thanks guys.

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How long has it been in the bottles? I'd give it at least a few months before trying again. I recently brewed a batch of alcoholic ginger beer and due to other committments I rushed it into bottles. Tasted fine but smelt like rhino farts. I didn't dump it instead left it for around 3 months and it came out amazing.

Cracked the first bottle of this last night. Girlfriend made a 1 gallon batch of plain cider that we made into this recipe, so our recipe varied a little bit. Bottles carb'd up really fast (2 days) and we only lost one bottle to pasteurization.

This stuff is good for sure. We are defiantly going to be making a full 5 gallon batch of this.

speedyG said:

I finished pasteurizing last night. I didn't have any bottle bombs with the longnecks or bombers. It leads me to believe I had some weak regular bottles. I opened the first one tonight and tried it. It reminds me of champagne

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Did you backsweeten it? I recall tasting it before backsweetening it, and that is the same 'Champagne' taste I recieved. Then adding the caramel mix and thawed Frozen AJ concentrate caused it to be a fantastic smooth cider.

Pasturized mine today. I lost one 6 minutes in i hear a boom must of been a weak bottle. I will be serving some of these for christmas if they last that long. Will be starting another batch this week

janson745 said:

Did you backsweeten it? I recall tasting it before backsweetening it, and that is the same 'Champagne' taste I recieved. Then adding the caramel mix and thawed Frozen AJ concentrate caused it to be a fantastic smooth cider.

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I did back sweeten it with the caramel and four cans of frozen concentrate. It was a little dry for my taste but let's see what a little age does for it.

Chuckabrewski said:

I made this and gave a few bottles away but the responses have not been good.

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Obviously you need a better class of friends.

UpstateMike said:

Obviously you need a better class of friends.

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You are right!!! I gave out 3 bottles and the first person called me saying how much they hated it. Today at work I asked the other 2 and both loved it and asked for more.

For the sake of safety I am going to back sweeten this in the keg. When it is nice and carbonated I am going to bottle it via a beer gun and then put them right in the dishwasher for a 150* bath. Thoughts?

lunshbox said:

For the sake of safety I am going to back sweeten this in the keg. When it is nice and carbonated I am going to bottle it via a beer gun and then put them right in the dishwasher for a 150* bath. Thoughts?

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I reckon that if you're kegging you can add campden tablets when you back sweeten as the carbonation can be added with your co2 set up. There should be no need to pasteurise if you've added carbonation without using the yeast to do the conditioning.

mcspanner said:

I reckon that if you're kegging you can add campden tablets when you back sweeten as the carbonation can be added with your co2 set up. There should be no need to pasteurise if you've added carbonation without using the yeast to do the conditioning.

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What was I thinking? That is a much simpler and better idea. Cheers!

I've got mine kegged right now and naturally carbonating. I'll add the Camden tablets when I'm happy with the carb level then reseal the keg at serving pressure.

I made a mistake... forgot to add the 3 LB corn in primary. Has anyone done this? Any difference in taste? The OG was 1.050. I could add it now and (gently) stir, but usually prefer not to interrupt the yeasties during their partying phase. They're shy and all, you know...

william_shakes_beer said:

I made a mistake... forgot to add the 3 LB corn in primary. Has anyone done this? Any difference in taste? The OG was 1.050. I could add it now and (gently) stir, but usually prefer not to interrupt the yeasties during their partying phase. They're shy and all, you know...

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I thought it was only 2 lbs....maybe that was changed in the revised version. All you'll really be doing is adding alcohol content. I think the taste will be the same. You would have ended up with 10 more points or so of gravity but, I think, ended at the same SG. You'll just be able to drink a few more at a time now

mixing it in just gives them the oxygen they need to continue doing what they do best anyway!

william_shakes_beer said:

I made a mistake... forgot to add the 3 LB corn in primary. Has anyone done this? Any difference in taste? The OG was 1.050. I could add it now and (gently) stir, but usually prefer not to interrupt the yeasties during their partying phase. They're shy and all, you know...

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Yeah I'd leave it. Your just going to end up with a drink with less abv. Good news is you'll be able to drink it sooner even though it already tasted really good green

I'm still bubbling away at 18 days....

I am prepping to start my second batch

So i bottled my second batch yesterday in 22oz bombers, instead of 12oz bottles. Is it going to take longer to carb up? I also filled up a pop bottle to check, but I am not sure it will indicate the time the bombers are ready. Thoughts?

Dumb question. Where do I get the dextrose? Is it something I can get at the grocery store or at my home brew store?

Jdseiverth said:

Dumb question. Where do I get the dextrose? Is it something I can get at the grocery store or at my home brew store?

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Its corn sugar. Your local brew store should have it.

Thanks for the info. This is my first brew of anything. My wife got me the brew kit for Xmas with my knowledge. I have been trying to get her to let me get started on a beer brew before Christmas with no luck. I mentioned this recipe to her and I got a 5 gallon batch in ferment or last night. Recipe seems easy enough except for bottle bombs which I will watch closely. I hope mine turns out as good as you guys have been saying it is.

This recipe was definitely a big hit for my wife. She even went out and bought an additional 5 gallons of cider to make more. Unfortunately, she didn't realize cider with sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate is a big no-no. My fault for not telling her, but she could have mentioned she was planning on buying some more cider...

Mine has now been in the primary for 4 weeks...still bubbling...took a gravity reading and the OG was 1.011...weird thing is, at 65 degrees, i have a slight effervescence to the cider! not sure what to do here and whether to back sweeten or just add some apple pie spices, the cider has a hint of sweetness to it and tastes amazing on its own.