So 30 litres of apple juice and he doesn't like the taste...

Hi everyone, first post and am enjoying reading the forum.

The basic story is that a friend of mine has about 30 litres of apple juice (home-grown) that he thinks is too sweet and so has said I can try making cider with it. Im adding Bramley's to the mix to try and sharpen it up and then am adding champagne or white wine yeast aswell as a camden tablet. The questions I have are about amounts of yeast to add, is it affected by the Hydrometer reading or not, and also whether it is ok once you've left it to ferment can I add plain apple juice to sweeten it up again.

Also, on a side note not really cider related has anyone tried alcoholic lemonade. The friend has added yeast to a bottle with a bung and tube thing, (sorry for the basic language) but I can't believe it's that simple. Is it?

Thanks for any feedback, it's much appreciated.

Sam

10-15 gm of dry yeast will be plenty, ciders are a easy to ferment.
Yeast does not effect hydrometer readings.
If you backsweeten cider without killing the yeast, the yeast will ferment the new sugars.

Bramley's is a good call for mixing with sweet apples. You can always add tannin or acid if you cant get the juice balance you want from the apples on hand. Ale yeast is easier to control than champagne or wine yeast. Depends on how dry you want it. If you are thinking about backsweeting, you should switch to an ale yeast first.

Original apple sugar will taste better than anything you can use to backsweeten . To keep that, you need remove the yeast from the cider before the apple sugar is gone. If you dont mind the taste of sorbate, that is very effective for stopping the yeast. If you use sorbate, it will taste better if you do it before the sugar ferments out, rather than at the end and then backsweetening.

I prefer cold crashing, or repeated racking to get the yeast to drop out of suspension. This takes a little more work than kmeta/sorbate, but leaves no taste on the cider.

The forum search should be able to find plenty of lemonade related posts as well as any other brewing question

So your saying that adding the juice is ok as long as all of the yeast has been killed off? As for the acid I'm using citric acid on advice from another friend, and am going to most likely be pressing the rest of the apples at the start of half-term. As there is a lot of juice I'll try different sorts of yeasts so that next year I know the best mix for the range of apples.
Also, as I am very new to the brewing scene, what is racking? And when I add the yeast should I look out for any signs (I know about mould and things), but more if it is fermenting too fast/ too slowly etc.
Thanks for the great help so far, am looking forward to the tasting session already.
Sam

EDIT: Still no luck finding recipes for the lemonade, if anyone has any helpful websites or links could they post them up please.

racking is the process of siphoning (or for those with spigots, draining) a fermented or in our case fermenting beverage from one carboy to a second. You really need to research good technique and the process more than anything else. The actual adding of yeast, etc. is the easy part. keeping things clean and sanitary is the hard part and probably most important. as far as speed of fermentation it depends on yeast and temp. . . I like to ferment around 65.

there are several hard lemonade recipes on here. look for mikes for lemonade or woodchuck for cider.

this is the sub-forum for cider recipes https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/