Bad Cider

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=33291

Well after producing a pretty good batch of beer I tried my luck at fermenting apple juice into cider according to the above recipe. Well to make a long story short my batch did not have a positive outcome. I bought some 100 percent apple juice at kroger not from concentrate however I believe it was pasturized (I cant check one of the bottles because Im at work right now). The juice was the most "pure" stuff they had. Well after fermenting for 2 weeks with an initial gravity of 1.5 the final was only like 1.2 and it smelled pretty foul my roomate and I tried some of it and the taste wasnt much better. Oh yeah we used wine yeast and aclimated it to the temperature of the apple juice before adding it. The juice seemed to ferment well for a week then quit. I was just wondering if anybody had a heads up on what we did wrong thanks, Caleb.

It takes more like a month for it to finish up but it's possible that you just don't like cider. You could have had a contamination in your fermenter. Let it age and finish up a bit. You could try back sweetening with some splenda if you want it sweeter.

No help here, but curious why you didn't become a pod-person and go with the ubiquitous apfelwein stuff? I don't know if I'm gonna like the stuff judging by the end of 1 week smell, but heck, it was mentioned so often, I just 'had to be a pepper too'.

Even worse, I'm using a plastic bucket instead of a carboy... I'll let you know how it goes.

jowens said:

Even worse, I'm using a plastic bucket instead of a carboy... I'll let you know how it goes.

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That's what I used, too! But I just got some new carboys off of Craigslist, so I racked it to secondary today.

jowens said:

No help here, but curious why you didn't become a pod-person and go with the ubiquitous apfelwein stuff?

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thanks for the replies guys. Actually we let it ferment for 2 weeks before trying it according to that recipie I posted earlier. I had a glass yesterday (3 weeks into it) and it was better than last week still nothing to really brag about. I might have to try the apfelwein sometime.

I can tell you from experience that the apfelwein is great. I thought 5 gallons was going to be PLENTY. I'm getting ready to make another batch here before too long

Boiling apple juice can set the pectin and give you very odd results.