Hard Cider Making/Recipe/Advice

I have the opportunity to get some freshly pressed apple cider in two weeks. Friend of mine invited me along for a Apple Cider/Pick/Squeeze open to friends in his homebrew club.

I've never made cider before, only EdWort's Apfelwine. My friend only wild ferments his cider.

Does anyone have recipes for a good holiday cider?

I also am curious as to if I should pasteurize it in any way? Or should I just put it in a carboy and add some adjunct sugar and yeast?


I've made plenty of beer, I'm not fluent in hard cider making.

You definitely will want to drop a couple of Campden Tabs in there to kill the baddies.

The sugar part is up to you. It depends on how much ABV you want.

You could use Wyeast's or Whitelabs Cider yeast.

Holiday Cider, so I figure you want it strong, sweet, spiced and served hot? I suggest you add Dark Brown Sugar, Honey, or some unrefined sugars in there to get it up to an SG of 1.065 or so. Natural apple juice has an OG of somewhere around 1.050, and I read somewhere that the WL cider yeast is better than the wyeast one, which should take it to dryness. Now if you want it sweet, the way to go will be to stabalize the cider, then add either more juice, or some sugar to backsweeten. Age for a minimum of 4 months (I don't drink it before 6 months of aging usually) then heat up with your spices and serve in a nice big mug with a shot of apple jack or dark rum, with a cinnamon stick for sturring.

I would like to carbonate it, and kegging is out of the question at the moment, but by the time it is ready, I may have aquired a kegging setup.

If needed I could backsweeten to keg.

I am just looking for some recipes for a good cider.

I'd say add about 2 lbs of that brown sugar. If you have fresh squeezed AJ then top to 5 gallons (my assumption is a 5-gallon batch). The yeast is entirely up to you. If what the guy says above is correct, WL will be dryer and take away some if not most of the sweetness of the AJ sugar. If you get kegging by the time you serve it then no worries cause you are right - you can back sweeten. Only you will be able to tell the correct level of backsweetening for your tastes, however I recommend adding one can of AJ concentrate at a time and tasting each time to determine what you like. Once you add the backsweetener though put that puppy in the fridge. If you don't whatever yeast you are using will devour the sugar you put in. If you are bottling you will have to find a non fermentable backsweetener like lactose or something like it. If you don't want a DRY cider stay away from MOST wine yeasts.

I am going to get some of the White Labs English Cider yeast. And I had to go get some campden tablets.

Looks like my keg system will be here before this batch is ready to drink. So I think I will just backsweeten it in the end. Thanks for all the suggestions.

I just kicked off a batch of hard cider fermenting-- I bought 5 gallons of unpasturized, no preservative added cider from a local farm, which was hard to find- most places claim unpastuerized cider is illegal to sell.
My recipe was roughly as follows- warm one gallon of cider to BELOW 170 F and dissolve 5 lbs sugar into it.
Pour this and the other 4 gallons into primary fermenter, and add:
1 packet champagne yeast
5 campden tablets
yeast nutrient
Grape tannin
acid blend
pectic enzyme

Starting gravity was 1.092
by day 2 the fermenter airlock is bubbling like crazy, 3x per second
Seems to be going very quickly but I'll have to test the gravity to know for sure.