Apfelwein w/ Wyeast 3068

Made a 4 gallon batch with 2 pounds of dark brown sugar, 1 pound of corn sugar,and Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan yeast that I practiced making my first yeast starter with, and pitched the starter into the apple juice, which I got for 1.99 a gallon!!!! at the local grocery outlet....

That was on 9-12-09, and it looks awesome, all dark and beautiful! Now SWMBO's dad wants to make a batch for himself....badass!

This is my second batch, the first batch I followed the recipe but this time I thought I would deviate a bit.

Anybody else use 3068 yeast?

I've used it to make some pretty excellent cider! I initially chose it because I was hoping to lend some of the clove/citrus characteristics of the yeast to my cider. You know how it is sometimes though... School, work, ladies... Long story short, I never got to try the cider while it was still young, which is when I believe it would have been best.

I started it in March and I still have about 10L of it aging in bottles. After a month in primary and 3 more months in secondary it still carbed up just fine after 3 weeks. Like I said, it probably would have been better straight out of primary and into the bottle but since I fudged that up I continued to let it age. It's a fine cider these days, I like to drink it with a splash of fresh cider in the glass to reinforce the apple flavours.

My conclusion is that Wyeast 3068 makes a fine cider, although you can't really benefit from the estery characteristics of this yeast unless you drink it young. To create a cider that's drinkable while it's young it has to have a lower alcohol content than Apfelwein, IMHO. I'm going to be using Wyeast 3068 again, although this time my target ABV will be 4% rather than upwards of 7%.

Good luck!

Check out this thread: Better than Apfelwein

FishinDave07 said:

Check out this thread: Better than Apfelwein

Click to expand...

Yeah that is where I got the original idea to use this yeast. I am excited to see how it turns out, and I will have to read that complete thread....thanks for posting that!

What was your FG? Mine is stuck at 1.018