First cider batch started

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truekey

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Doing a test gallon of cider after reading this forum. Gravity of apple juice was 1.050, added a can of concentrate which only boosted the SG to 1.060. Still, I didn't want to run out to the store to get another can so I added half a tsp of yeast nutrient, shook, and added half a package of Nottingham ale yeast.

I will post pictures as this experiment goes further...

Thanks to everyone for posting their recipes and ideas.
 
Been 24 hours or so and it's bubbling every couple seconds from my blowoff tube. No crazy fermentation. I added another 1/2 tsp of yeast nutrient which brings it to the recommended 1 tsp per gallon. It fizzled like crazy when I dropped it into my primary.

I definitely love beer but the idea of pitching yeast into some juice and getting a gallon of home made alcohol is awesome compared to my 4-5 hr brew day.
 
truekey said:
Been 24 hours or so and it's bubbling every couple seconds from my blowoff tube. No crazy fermentation. I added another 1/2 tsp of yeast nutrient which brings it to the recommended 1 tsp per gallon. It fizzled like crazy when I dropped it into my primary.

I definitely love beer but the idea of pitching yeast into some juice and getting a gallon of home made alcohol is awesome compared to my 4-5 hr brew day.

That is why I am in love with cider! You can use almost any fruit at it doesn't have to be sweet...
:mug:
 
Crazy fermentation now, cider looks like when you open a fresh bottle of seltzer.

I was considering adding some mulling spices from my secondary, or just using some ginger. Question:

Can I drop spices/ginger into the secondary, or should I make an extract by boiling out ingredients or having it sit in hard liquor?
 
I started my first 1 gallon batch of cider last night. Woke up this morning and the airlock was bubbling every 10-15 seconds about 12 hrs after pitching. Can't wait to get home from work and see how it's going now!

Can anyone recommend when to rack to secondary? OG 1.065 champagne yeast and 1 tsp. nutrient. I want to bottle carb and I'm not all that worried about clearing or sweetness
 
xjbobbin82 said:
I started my first 1 gallon batch of cider last night. Woke up this morning and the airlock was bubbling every 10-15 seconds about 12 hrs after pitching. Can't wait to get home from work and see how it's going now!

Can anyone recommend when to rack to secondary? OG 1.065 champagne yeast and 1 tsp. nutrient. I want to bottle carb and I'm not all that worried about clearing or sweetness

Rack to secondary three weeks or months after....
Most of the time.
But some guys rack as soon as fermentation is finished and sometimes that can be as quick as two weeks.....
If I were you I'd let it sit in there for about three weeks and take a reading with your hydrometer and see where it is, if it's done rack it :)
 
Crazy fermentation now, cider looks like when you open a fresh bottle of seltzer.

I was considering adding some mulling spices from my secondary, or just using some ginger. Question:

Can I drop spices/ginger into the secondary, or should I make an extract by boiling out ingredients or having it sit in hard liquor?

I've done this both ways -- dropping into secondary and making tea/extract -- with ginger, cardamom, pink peppercorns, cinnamon sticks and orange peel (separate batches).

Generally, I've preferred the tea/extract method to just dropping into the secondary as I found it to give a much cleaner, fresher flavor. Dropping them into the carboy seemed to extract less aroma and make the spices taste a bit stale or musty.

Soaking spices in vodka for a week seems to do the trick and I think it captures and preserves more aroma than steeping in boiling water. Boiling water also tends to extract some harsher flavors in my opinion.
 
I started my first 1 gallon batch of cider last night. Woke up this morning and the airlock was bubbling every 10-15 seconds about 12 hrs after pitching. Can't wait to get home from work and see how it's going now!

Can anyone recommend when to rack to secondary? OG 1.065 champagne yeast and 1 tsp. nutrient. I want to bottle carb and I'm not all that worried about clearing or sweetness

A word of caution, since you mention this is your first batch and may be relatively new to brewing as well: remember that with cider, your FG may be lower than 1.000 due to the all sugars in apple juice being fermentable and alcohol being less dense than water. I rushed to bottle my first batch and had a lot of explosions. It's not uncommon to hit an FG of 0.996, so just make sure your fermentation is really complete.
 
I'll probably take a reading once its sat for a week. Looking to bottle carb. If I backsweeten with AJC, wouldn't the yeast just ferment all of that and leave me with bottle bombs?

Would it be safest not to back sweeten it at all? Making this for my lady for valentines day. She seemed to like the AO crisp apple and even traditional dry.
 
truekey said:
I'll probably take a reading once its sat for a week. Looking to bottle carb. If I backsweeten with AJC, wouldn't the yeast just ferment all of that and leave me with bottle bombs?

Would it be safest not to back sweeten it at all? Making this for my lady for valentines day. She seemed to like the AO crisp apple and even traditional dry.

I think a week might be a little early but you may want to ask some of the other guys....
You won't have bottle bombs no matter what as long as you're checking the carbonation every couple of days... I crack a bottle every two days and when it gets closer every other day until it's where I like it, Then cold crash....
Then you can stovetop pasteurize.
Look at some of the threads about how to do that but I would suggest putting a colander in the bottom of the pot that you boil so you don't have your bottles right on this bottom of the pot...
Also make sure you turn the heat off completely and put the thermometer in to see where the temperature is... I think sometimes a lot of new folks put the bottles in when the fire is on and I'm pretty sure that's not best.

LeBreton And a few other folks on here had mentioned a good trick about putting the cider in a plastic bottle and then feeling it and you will know when it's nice and carbonated because the bottle will have hard pressure...
 
I'll probably take a reading once its sat for a week. Looking to bottle carb. If I backsweeten with AJC, wouldn't the yeast just ferment all of that and leave me with bottle bombs?

Would it be safest not to back sweeten it at all? Making this for my lady for valentines day. She seemed to like the AO crisp apple and even traditional dry.

I'd assume that if you use enough concentrate, you could get a good carb and pasteurize before the yeast eats up the rest of the sugar. It should raise the ABV as well. Only way to know for sure is to keep a close eye on carbonation so you don't blow any bottles, and taste and/or take SG readings to figure out when you want to pasteurize and kill the yeast.

However, I have no experience, for I just started my first batch ever. I'm just going off of the info I've picked up in the forum.
 
You won't have bottle bombs no matter what as long as you're checking the carbonation every couple of days... I crack a bottle every two days and when it gets closer every other day until it's where I like it, Then cold crash....
Do you check the same bottle, or do you pop a different bottle each time? Will opening a bottle during the carbonation process in turn cause that bottle to have less carb than the others?
 
xjbobbin82 said:
Do you check the same bottle, or do you pop a different bottle each time? Will opening a bottle during the carbonation process in turn cause that bottle to have less carb than the others?

Okay, first of all when you crack a bottle open you drink the whole thing down...
So your option is have a homebrew every couple a days.... Get little 6 1/2 or 7 ounce bottles (Coronita's)... Or the best way, which LeBreton mentioned was fill a plastic bottle at the same time as filling your glass bottles and just feel and squeeze on the plastic bottle every few days until it's hard then crack a glass bottle and test it.. I have not done this yet but it seems logical and pretty easy so it should be no problem, I plan to do it in a couple of weeks with my new batch :)
It should be pretty close to where you want it carbonation wise or you can let it go another day or two and tested again by cracking a new bottle open and drinking that one....
Don't worry, if you follow directions from savvy people like Yooper, LeBreton, ChemE and the rest of the HB Talk big dogs you will be fine.
:mug:
 
I'll probably take a reading once its sat for a week. Looking to bottle carb. If I backsweeten with AJC, wouldn't the yeast just ferment all of that and leave me with bottle bombs?

Would it be safest not to back sweeten it at all? Making this for my lady for valentines day. She seemed to like the AO crisp apple and even traditional dry.

Another backsweetening option, if you have fridge space, is to backsweeten, bottle carbonate and then store in the fridge once your desired carbonation is reached since cold will pause the fermentation.
 
Took a reading just now.

Cider is at 1.010, was tempted to put the test cider back into my gallon jug but decided against it.

Tasting it right now... a little watery, definitely a taste of booze, and still has a good apple note to it. I will definitely backsweeten in a secondary after trying this.

So it's been in a primary only since monday. Should I let it sit until it hits 1 or 0.996?

This rules. Can't wait to do my beer batch but I will definitely keep a pipeline of cider running throughout the year now.
 
image-1255568123.jpg

Drinking out of the cylinder. Yum.
 
So it's been in a primary only since monday. Should I let it sit until it hits 1 or 0.996?

I'd let it sit until the gravity stops changing for a few days. However, since it sounds like you're going to backsweeten anyway, I'll also offer this idea: rather than backsweetening, you could bottle now, check carbonation daily to avoid bottle bombs, and then move to the fridge or pasteurize to stop fermentation. You should be left with a good residual sweetness but you'll have a small amount less alcohol (~1.5%). I find the apple flavor produced by this method to be better than what is achieved by backsweetening, since you're tasting the base cider and not just some AJC or honey that was added. Sort of a tradeoff between alcohol and flavor, but if you like how it tastes now you may want to give this a shot.
 
It's got a lot of apple flavor right now and the shift from 1.060 to 1.010 is about 6% ABV already I think, which is fine by me. I will probably just bottle tomorrow then. I mad some semi-bombs with my beer the other day. Added what I still think is the right amount of priming sugar but opened a bottle at room temperature only three or four days after bottling and it exploded into a foam fountain the second I pried the cap.

Problem with checking carbonation is that I am only doing one gallon, so if I open a bottle every day I'm only going to have a handful to drink when they're ready. I'd get a 5 gallon carb but I usually do 1 gal beers because I don't have the heating equipment or space for bigger batches yet.
 
On second thought I heard about collecting mini bottles or using the plastic bottle trick to check carbonation.
 
BadgerBrigade said:
That is why I am in love with cider! You can use almost any fruit at it doesn't have to be sweet...
:mug:

Me too! Berries or 100% juice added to change up the flavor. Yummy.
 
truekey said:
On second thought I heard about collecting mini bottles or using the plastic bottle trick to check carbonation.

I bottle 5 gal. into 50-51 12 oz. bottles and a plastic bottle. When the plastic bottle gets hard I test a glass bottle a day til I'm happy then pasteurize. Then I put 48 bottles (2 cases) away for 5-6 months min. and flavor really comes out.

I have not yet back sweetened so the bottle bombs are not a big fear. But I feel safer about a pasteurized product, no live organisms.
 
I didn't bother to backsweeten. Took a reading and got just above 1 on the hydrometer and decided since they ferment out a bit lower than 1 that I could just bottle it now and get a low carb on it. Bottling one gallon was stupidly simple with an auto siphon and a wand. Took all of maybe 10 minutes to bottle.

Tasting again now (I had a little extra) and the nottingham yeast really comes through towards the end. Very high acidity but still has an apple taste to it this early. I will carb for a few days, check, and then cold crash until february when I serve 'em. Hopefully in a month they won't taste worse than better.... I've heard some things about brews getting worse before they get better on the forums.

This was so easy that next time I will do a 5 gallon batch in my bucket. Also, I'm super interested in making graf with some dark extract and brewers gold I got lying around.
 
I didn't bother to backsweeten. Took a reading and got just above 1 on the hydrometer and decided since they ferment out a bit lower than 1 that I could just bottle it now and get a low carb on it. Bottling one gallon was stupidly simple with an auto siphon and a wand. Took all of maybe 10 minutes to bottle.

Tasting again now (I had a little extra) and the nottingham yeast really comes through towards the end. Very high acidity but still has an apple taste to it this early. I will carb for a few days, check, and then cold crash until february when I serve 'em. Hopefully in a month they won't taste worse than better.... I've heard some things about brews getting worse before they get better on the forums.

This was so easy that next time I will do a 5 gallon batch in my bucket. Also, I'm super interested in making graf with some dark extract and brewers gold I got lying around.
 
I'm very interested in your progress with this. Just yesterday I started my first cider as well. Our batches should be very similar. 5 gallons of Target brand Apple Cider with 2 packs of Muntons, pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, tannin, and about 2lbs of sugar. O.G. 1.065. Any thoughts on how I should proceed? If/when to do secondary fermentation, additions, and when to keg? I'm worried that if I let this get to 1.00 I will have 8.5% alcohol, too little fruit flavor, and not sure about acidity. Any tips appreciated.
 
I'm very interested in your progress with this. Just yesterday I started my first cider as well. Our batches should be very similar. 5 gallons of Target brand Apple Cider with 2 packs of Muntons, pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, tannin, and about 2lbs of sugar. O.G. 1.065. Any thoughts on how I should proceed? If/when to do secondary fermentation, additions, and when to keg? I'm worried that if I let this get to 1.00 I will have 8.5% alcohol, too little fruit flavor, and not sure about acidity. Any tips appreciated.

I'd add everything but the tannin during primary. You should adjust tannin to taste in the finished cider.

It sounds like you want some residual sweetness and are also kegging. Generally you would let the cider reach 1.000 (or lower) and then backsweeten with apple concentrate/honey/other sweetener, and either add sorbate or store in the fridge to prevent refermentation.

Another technique I've played around with is stopping the fermentation short when I like the taste/sweetness (around 1.008) with sorbate and force carbonating. The drawback here is your yeast don't get a chance to "clean up" but if you're happy with the taste then that's not a problem. I find the appleyness is much better this way than anything you can achieve by backsweetening, so it's sort of a tradeoff.
 
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