All Apple cider

I've been looking for a cider recipe that only includes:

• Apples
• Water
• Yeast

However, after perusing the internet I have been unable to find anything useful (except for this, http://www.hormel.com/templates/template.asp?catitemid=113&id=831 )

I also plan to bottle this and carbonate it using nothing but apples.

Anyone have any suggestions?

We had a cider press on the farm I grew up on. Essentially all it did was grind the apples then drop them into burlap sacks which were pressed at about 1500 pounds to extract the juice the add a little sugar. We used to produce about 500 gallons a run and when we wanted it hard we did not add any preservative but yeast instead. Couldn't sell the hard stuff but we did give away quite a bit of it. We produced and sold somewhere around 3-4000 gallons of cider a year on our stand.

As I recall, Macintosh apples made the best cider.

Well, it looks like you have your recipe

All real cider should only have apples...I guess some would add sugar, but that's not a good idea IMO. In fact, you don't need water. Just:

Apples
Yeast

I posted this on the subject from my experience making cider with just apples and champagne yeast:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96

But really nothing could be easier. Take as much organic apple cider as you want to ferment and add a wine yeast (all normal rules of cleanliness apply). Presto!

Janx

we make a Hard Apple Cider,
with 1 gallon of Apple Cider, 1 gallon of Apple Juice, 8 sticks of cinnamon, and a fith of Everclear

riddlebox said:

we make a Hard Apple Cider,
with 1 gallon of Apple Cider, 1 gallon of Apple Juice, 8 sticks of cinnamon, and a fith of Everclear

Click to expand...

So that's more of a mixed drink than hard cider...I'm assuming you don't actually ferment it?

yeah it is, but it still tastes good

Kotzbrocken said:

I've been looking for a cider recipe that only includes:

• Apples
• Water
• Yeast

However, after perusing the internet I have been unable to find anything useful (except for this, http://www.hormel.com/templates/template.asp?catitemid=113&id=831 )

I also plan to bottle this and carbonate it using nothing but apples.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Click to expand...

I would suggest the book "The Art of Making Cider" by Paul Correnty. It has a complete chapter of cider recipes and provides the basics (and some advanced techniques) of making good cider.

The opinion the cider should be made from "Only" apples and yeast is very limiting and does not take the history of cider making into account (check out New England cider). Also, some apple juice does not have the sugar content necessary to properly ferment to a good hard cider. Most texts on making cider advise adding the sugar of your choice to achieve an original gravity of 1.045.


Best of luck in making your cider. Bye the way, I have a 12% ABV Rasperberry Cider fermenting out on my kitchen counter. I would be happy to post a recipe or two if you like.

Dave

For a huge list of recipes try this:

http://brewery.org/brewery/cm3/recs/11_toc.html

I usually will add lemon juice (Real Lemon pre squozin juice works fine )
to adjust the acidity, ground grape skins to add tanic acid, yeast energizer that will turn your fermentation into a 3-4 day affair to get to 1.000 and recently included french oak chips for the flavour of cask fermented cider.

It makes a huge difference!

The local cider was always just apple juice allowed to ferment naturally in casks. No need for any ingredients. Even the yeast was from airborne sources.

Sugar was the exception which was added when the apple variety wasn't sweet enough.

http://gardenspace.newarchaeology.com/make_cider.php

Try this if you haven't already.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~gunning/scrumpy/makingit.html

Cheers.