Cider recipe (similar to strongbow dry imo)

I recently finished drinking a younger cider that I made, and I found it to be very similar to strongbow even though ti still tasted young.

Heres the recipe:

x gallons treetop applejuice
1 cup white sugar for every gallon of juice.
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract per gallon

Instead of doing the average mix sugar and juice together I caramelized the sugar then dissolved it in a few cups of juice and added about a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

To caramelize the sugar put it in a wide bottom sauce pan add a tablespoon of water for every cup put on medium heat and slowly melt. Watch it carefully and stir it around everyonce in awhile to see if its started to melt and so you can adjust heat so it wont burn. Pretty soon it will be turning to liquid state. When it is completly dissolved and around a light amber color take it off heat and slowly add heat off and on just to get it to a medium amber color then place the pot in a bucket of ice and stir. Let it cool a few minutes then add some apple juice (enough to let the melted sugar mix and dissolve into a light syrup (it will turn hardish when liquid is first added. Once disolve add vanilla and cool some more then mix with juice in fermenter add montrachet yeast and ferment in a cool place (55-62ish degrees) for about a month or 2 let it clear pretty well before you bottle then age.

Nice recipe! I am gonna have to try this. It kinda reminds me of the burnt honey mead recipe. Thanks for posting!

I have not seen montrachet yeast at my homebrew shop. Would the WYeast Cider yeast or Champagne yeast dry it out enough?

Champagne yeast will dry most anything out. It's like desert air or something. I've had it take wines down to 18.5% abv. before. EC-1118 took care of my cider in five days!

fermenting low and slow is probably a better idea than a 5 day ferment, besides you should let it clear before bottling and age a few months at least for optimal flavor.

Just a quick follow up on this thread. I have now brewed this recipe about a dozen time for my wife and she loves it. The key on the vanilla is to use good quality vanilla extract. We brought some back from the Dominican and it was cheap... Cider turned out great but you vanilla flavor was a little off. We can usually barely taste it at all.

I have used the 1118 as well as the White Labs Cider Yeast and both have worked very well at varying temp changes. I have found the higher the temp, the dryer the cider with a little more warming. That said, my wife seems to prefer it over the low and slow method.

I have a batch fermenting now with the WYEAST Cider Yeast at 66F, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I brewed this batch and turned out to be very popular with my friends! I love ciders and I drink it quite often as well. Mine came out very clean and finished at 1.007 It was really kind of like a smooth sipping apple juice with a nice tart bite finish to it, kinda like a shocktart candy. I used 5 gallons of Mott's 100% aj, 2 lbs cane sugar and a packet of Safale 05. Fermented 3 weeks at 70.