Looking for advice on house apfelwein/cider.

I'm looking to have a relatively low abv apfelwein (or would it be a cider) as one of my house specialties. The idea though is to have something I can pump out in a short amount of time, maybe 6 weeks.

I've got several 5 gallon food grade buckets, I was thinking of dumping 4.5 gallons of apple juice in with some nutrient, fermenting with a wine yeast, then about 6 weeks later transfer to keg and back sweeten with another .5 gallons of apple juice. Does this sound like an approachable cider to have on tap for session drinking?

Also, i've never back sweetened before, would I add the potassium sorbate to the keg, mix with the .5 gallon of apple juice and rack on top of that?

Look up EdWort's recipe for Apfelwine....then check out the 5000+ posts about it. You'll have all the answers you need (and then some).

There was a guy that tested a bunch of different takes of EdWorts original. He tried different combinations (straight apple, apple +1# sugar, +2# sugar) with a bunch of different yeasts.

If I recall, his favorite was straight apple juice with the Weihenstephan 3068 strain.

You'd typically finish a little sweeter with an ale yeast, so backsweetening may not be necessary. Then again, it's all simple sugars, mine still get to 1.000 with ale yeast. Still needs age though - 6 weeks is tight.

If it's not Edwort's recipe, it's not Edwart's Apfelwein, it's just Apfelwein.
And to be fair, afelwein is just German for apple wine. Not certain why everyone has the habit of using German all the time.

But hey ho.

Yes, the Apfelwein is an easy one to make that can be bashed out quickly, cheaply and easily with good results.

Dicky

I've got about 4 jars of 3068 in the fridge, maybe next batch I'll give that a whirl. Do you think .5 gallon headspace in a 5 gallon bucket will be ok for this yeast? I've only used it twice; once it blew out with 1.5 gallon headspace in a 6.5 gallon bucket, the other time it didn't.

Haha...it certainly goes nuts with malt. I've not observed as much krausen with just simple sugars, but I've never done 100% apple juice with only 3068. You could always do 4 gallons and add more once activity slows. Or just go for it and hope for the best.