Going to try making hard cider

Thought I'd try making some hard cider. I have made a lot of good beer so am familiar with brewing procedures. This seems relatively simple, but I have a few questions:

1) When you pitch the yeast do you need to aerate the cider? For beer you need to get air into the wort to get the yeast working. In all the 'instructions' I have seen for hard cider, not one has said anything about aerating the cider.

2) When priming for bottling, how much sugar do you use? I had assumed it would be the same as you would use for beer (2/3 rds cup cane sugar for 5 gallons), but in the attached link http://www.makinghardcider.com/rack-bottle.html it says to use 3/4 cup for a gallon. Seems set up for exploding bottle bombs.

3) I think I'll just go simple to start off; pasteurized apple juice, ferment dry with ale yeast, maybe add some xylitol to some to see what difference it makes, and bottle carb. However, in my brief research, I've come across references to Graff (also in a couple of the recent threads here) which has some Crystal and hops added. Can anyone tell me where there is a good resource for information on this, as I might try it if my initial attempt at hard cider is reasonably successful.

Calder said:

Thought I'd try making some hard cider. I have made a lot of good beer so am familiar with brewing procedures. This seems relatively simple, but I have a few questions:

1) When you pitch the yeast do you need to aerate the cider? For beer you need to get air into the wort to get the yeast working. In all the 'instructions' I have seen for hard cider, not one has said anything about aerating the cider.

2) When priming for bottling, how much sugar do you use? I had assumed it would be the same as you would use for beer (2/3 rds cup cane sugar for 5 gallons), but in the attached link http://www.makinghardcider.com/rack-bottle.html it says to use 3/4 cup for a gallon. Seems set up for exploding bottle bombs.

3) I think I'll just go simple to start off; pasteurized apple juice, ferment dry with ale yeast, maybe add some xylitol to some to see what difference it makes, and bottle carb. However, in my brief research, I've come across references to Graff (also in a couple of the recent threads here) which has some Crystal and hops added. Can anyone tell me where there is a good resource for information on this, as I might try it if my initial attempt at hard cider is reasonably successful.

Click to expand...

1. I aerate by shaking/swirling the carboy
2. I use the same ratio to carbonate beer as I do cider
3. I think there is a recipe for graff in the recipe database portion of the forum, under cider - I think its called Brandon O's Graff.

Just trying to get this straight. You aerate cider the same way you aerate beer; correct? It's just when I see sites/instructions that say if you buy it in a gallon jug, all you need to do is add yeast and stick in an airlock. Seems like some mis-information.

OK tomorrow I'm going to make the dive ad give it a go. I'm going to buy a couple of gallons of 365 at the local health food store and add yeast to them and see what happens, and I'm going to get a couple of gallons of Musselmans cider and put them in glass gallon fermenters and see what happens to them. I'll take all 4 gallons to dryness and then carbonate in bottle. Any issues?

Questions:

- I have some fresh PacMan yeast cake/slurry. Any problems using some of this. I have about 1.5 pints left, I used the other half in an Arrogant Bastard clone this evening. It is a clean fermenting yeast. How much should I use per gallon? I have Nottingham in a fresh packet, but why waste the PacMan?

- Should I add any additional sugar. I'm not after the alcohol (I've got tons of beer stored; not short). What produces the best cider?

- If I sweeten a gallon with a non-fermentable sweetener. Any recommendations?

- This is just an experiment to see how it turns out. Any suggestions on how to make the 4 gallons a little different from each other.

when i make cider, i use 5 gallons of wal-mart apple juice (no preservatives in it), 4 pounds of sugar, and montrachet wine yeast. simple as can be, and no worries. yes, you aerate them the same. use lactose if you want to sweeten without fermenting more. don't use any hops; it'll be nasty

Does anyone have the cider recipe from the link below as the web page is no longer working. I know it was a good recipe so Im keen to get my hands on the recipe. If someone could post it that would be great.

Calder said:

Thought I'd try making some hard cider. I have made a lot of good beer so am familiar with brewing procedures. This seems relatively simple, but I have a few questions:

1) When you pitch the yeast do you need to aerate the cider? For beer you need to get air into the wort to get the yeast working. In all the 'instructions' I have seen for hard cider, not one has said anything about aerating the cider.

2) When priming for bottling, how much sugar do you use? I had assumed it would be the same as you would use for beer (2/3 rds cup cane sugar for 5 gallons), but in the attached link http://www.makinghardcider.com/rack-bottle.html it says to use 3/4 cup for a gallon. Seems set up for exploding bottle bombs.

3) I think I'll just go simple to start off; pasteurized apple juice, ferment dry with ale yeast, maybe add some xylitol to some to see what difference it makes, and bottle carb. However, in my brief research, I've come across references to Graff (also in a couple of the recent threads here) which has some Crystal and hops added. Can anyone tell me where there is a good resource for information on this, as I might try it if my initial attempt at hard cider is reasonably successful.

Click to expand...

This is one that is pretty popular.

http://www.howtomakehardcider.com/

I don't recall what recipe might have been on the other site.

I just made my first cider, moved it to secondary Thursday and its already very tasty. My recipe was 10 of the cheapest frozen concentrate apple juice from walmart (mixed with well water as per directions) 3 lbs corn sugar, 1 tsp yeast nutrient and a pack of dry ale yeast. I did not boil the apple juice but did submerge them in iodione sanitizer before I opened them. A couple of them were stickey on the outside so was being careful. Will bottle with 3/4 cup sugar mid week...