Made up a Cider recipe, I'll let you guys know how it turns out

I had a 3gal fermenter lying around so I thought I'd take the GF to the store and get some stuff to make a Cider for her because she likes Woodchuck Raspberry cider.

We got
7 cans of PRESERVATIVE FREE Apple juice concentrate from Meijer
1.5 pints of fresh raspberries.

Boiled Applejuice mix for 5 minutes
Boiled raspberries with 3 cups of water for 5 minutes

Chilled with my Immersion chiller

Dumped it all in the fermenter.

Added Montrachet yeast.


This stuff smells like Rhino farts when its fermenting, just like Apfelwein. BEWARE!

I'll let you know how it turns out. Still fermenting away after 4 days. Didn't take an OG reading because I figured that the fruit chunks would not contribute to the OG reading but there would be locked up fermentables inside them until the cell walls broke down enough to release the sugars. I expect it to finish around 1.002 or so, and be way up there like 6-7% alcohol.

Why did you boil? The apple juice concentrate would be safe from the can and boiling that or the berries will result in definite pectic haze.

Other then that, should be interesting. Curious how much flavor 1.5 pints of raspberries in primary will impart. As you said, let us know how it turns out!

Tusch is correct... might want to get some pectic enzyme in there like today.

Will we PLEASE stop boiling perfectly good applejuice?

if you must, bring it up to 150-60 and hold for 30 min. for a home pasturization (though most commercial brands of juice have already been pasturized... so this would be redundant)

same thing with the fresh fruits - pasturize if you must (I do a campden soak for 24 hours myself) but NEVER boil.

boiling most cider and wine fruits and juices not only can set the pectins in the fruit - resulting in a pectin haze (no big deal other than appearance really) but it will also change the flavors of the fruits - resulting in a less pronounced flavor. why pay top dollar for fresh fruit if you are going to boil it?

also looking at your recipe - I'd look into putting at least 1.5 -3 pounds of rasberries into a secondary if you want more than just a pinkish hue and the bearest hint of rasberry flavor. especialy using the montrechet - it has a tendancy to strip out fruit flavors during primary and requires quite a bit of time for even the main apple flavor to return with any strength. I fear your rasberry addition may be lost
if you really want a Rasberry right cross to the chin - go 5-6 pounds of rasberry in secondary and 2 ounces of rasberry extract into the bucket at bottling. then backsweeten ever so slightly for an off dry rasberrygasm.
not sure what woodchuck rasberry tastes like - but if it's like their apple ciders (pretty appley and sweet) you'll certainly need more rasberry in there to emulate it.

Why did I boil? I realized after I was mixing the concentrate that I had not sanitized my pot. it could have had any number of wild yeast in it. And really, it wasn't a boil, it was heated to a high temp, sub boiling, for a period of time. The raspberries, I thought would have some wild yeast on them and again, I didn't want to get that in the fermenter. This was a $20 experiment. And based on what you guys have already said, its not like it can't be secondaried and fixed if we find its not what we wanted. I am not concerned with pectic haze, quite the contrary actually. It looks pink and that is my girlfriends favorite color. We succeeded in making her a pink drink, which was one of the objectives.

I am still amazed at the massive amount of CO2 being produced. I took the fermenter out of the water bath and watched the top layer of the fruit up against the fermenters side wall. The bubbles were racing up the side to escape. If this were any bigger of a batch, I would not be concerned about an open ferment, the "wind" coming out of that thing would he measurable. Much more active than any beer I have made.

All in all, it was a fun hour long activity with SWMBO.

cool - i also missed the 3 gallon batch, I made my reccomendations on a 5.

if it looks good to you and it's fermenting away happily - then it's right

remember though if SWMBO likes a sweeter beverage you'll need to backsweeten (as you may well know Montrachet and fruit juice ferment WAY dry)
either way this sounds like it'll come out with an ABV well above what Woodchuck puts out...
enjoy

Snuffalupagus said:

Will we PLEASE stop boiling perfectly good applejuice?

if you must, bring it up to 150-60 and hold for 30 min. for a home pasturization (though most commercial brands of juice have already been pasturized... so this would be redundant)

same thing with the fresh fruits - pasturize if you must (I do a campden soak for 24 hours myself) but NEVER boil.

boiling most cider and wine fruits and juices not only can set the pectins in the fruit - resulting in a pectin haze (no big deal other than appearance really) but it will also change the flavors of the fruits - resulting in a less pronounced flavor. why pay top dollar for fresh fruit if you are going to boil it?

Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. I have just finished working at a winery for vintage and you would be amazed at what goes into the fermenter: leaves, insects, spiderwebs, dirt, all sorts of rubbish. A good ferment is great for cleaning stuff up. All they do is add a bit of pot. meta bisulphite and rehydrated yeast. The main thing to avoid is stuff left over from previous ferments - all containers and equipment are cleaned after each use. Winemakers are really just glorified cleaners, they do so much. beer makers are used to boiling the wort, but that is to kill the mash enzymes, not for sanitisation. When I make my cider the fruit is just milled and pressed, i don't even use PMS or camden tablets, but make sure I get a good ferment straight away and i have no problems.

gregbathurst said:

... A good ferment is great for cleaning stuff up. All they do is add a bit of pot. ...

Click to expand...

Wait... I thought that the temperature had to reach something like 300 degrees for the components of THC to become active.

Bwa ha ha... just kidding... I originally scanned the post and my brain stopped at the perceived period in POT. (potasium). Sorry, it's been a while since I've visited and I'm hurrying my reading while trying to catch up. We now resume our regularly scheduled post...

gregbathurst said:

... meta bisulphite and rehydrated yeast. ...

Click to expand...

;-)

JoeSponge said:

Wait... I thought that the temperature had to reach something like 300 degrees for the components of THC to become active.
;-)

Click to expand...

Really, I thought it was in the same family as hops so I'm surprised that the temperature required is so high. Unfortunately or fortunately I don't live in Cal, so I can't play with that stuff, just another interesting but useless factoid for me to clutter my brain with.

JoeSponge said:

Wait... I thought that the temperature had to reach something like 300 degrees for the components of THC to become active.


;-)

Click to expand...

Then why would anyone ever make brownies? Or why would anyone ever make a tincture with it? Or just eat it?

TetraHydrocannabinol is present regardless of temperature.

Anyway, back to my post.

The Cider is starting to clear up now. Most of the fruit chunks have sunk to the bottom now and you can see in a few inches. This haze that was talked about earlier seems to not be affecting this batch. Perhaps its because I disn't boil for even 5 minutes time.

Anyway, we are trying to figure out how to reinsert the raspberry flavoring into this. I am getting a CO2 setup so I could euthanize the yeast in suspension and then force carb it in a keg right? Can I bottle after force carbing?

Transferred to secondary for bulk aging for another month. Its a salmon/pink color. Very cool that we got the color we wanted. Final gravity is 1.002. Unfortunately there was no way to measure OG due to the addition of fruit in primary.

So, how does it taste? Well, I prepared for the worst. What I got was a very pleasant right hook to the jaw, very tart and sweet, slight raspberry flavor, no alcohol taste. THis stuff is going to be dangerous! OG had to be 1.070+!! Whats that like 8%?

Edit: 9.3%ABV?? Holy cow...

Well, you can kinda figure out how much sugar was in the raspberries using this: Sugar and Acid Content in Fruit Multiply the amount of fruit you used by the percentage of sugar then just count it as a sugar addition, and that should be fairly accurate.

I'm getting 32.76g of sugar added for 1.5 pints of raspberries.

So really there wasn't that much sugar added. Maybe .005ish was added, don't know but probably pretty correct, 6.3% roughly. Still not bad.