First cider success!

3 gallons of unpasturized apple juice
1 gallons Apple Cider (preserved with Potassium Sorbate)
Cider yeast

I started off with 2 gallons of apple juice. OG was 1.054, but that number isn't really accurate because I added more stuff later. I added 2 crushed campden tabs to kill off any bad guys. After 24 hours, I added the yeast, pectic enzyme, and yeast nutrient. A couple days later there was a layer of foam on the surface. The yeast was happy. I then added the third gallon of apple juice and some apple cider, (a half gallon per day.) The preservatives had no effect on such a thriving population of yeast. Yesterday I racked to a secondary fermenter and took a reading. SG: 0.998!!!!! Wow! I tasted the cider, it is like a fine dry apple wine. It has apple tartness, but no sweetness whatsoever. It was pretty darn good. I'm going to add some more cider to the mix, and some campden tabs to kill the yeast. That should add a little sweetness to the cider, but not much. I'll let the batch sit for a week or so, then bottle.

I don't like the idea of carbonation. I think I'll try just bottling the stuff as it is.

What fun. I'll be doing this more often. The only downside is, when I popped the top on the fermenter, it smelled like rotten eggs. My wife said, "what's that smell!?" I said, "It's the yeast... I THINK it will go away..." I took the hydrometer sample and a couple minutes later, I tasted it. By then the smell had dissipated from the sample, leaving a mild pleasant apple juice aroma.

Inovative way of getting around the preservative problem. I've never made a pure apple cider since my college days. Cornell had extensive experimental farms and after they had picked what they wanted, you could pick apples for $1/bushel (yah, I'm that old). There was a cider press nearby that would grind and press the apples for half the juice. So, if you brought your own jugs, the juice came out to about ten cents a gallon. We just let it ferment in the jugs.

I have acres of blackberries, so my blackberry cider is more like wine than cider. If my new apple trees ever get big enough to bear fruit and the deer & elk don't eat them all, I'll be making pure apple cider again.