I hope this isn't a duplicate post but I didn't see it as a new post!
First I am a reformed home brewer (I brewed for 7 or so years in the late 90s - early 00s) and new to the forum. I have quite a few apple trees of various varieties and have done some hard cider in the past with iffy results. Only one batch has turned out like I wanted. So this time I got a couple books on cider making and they were either too simple (like stupid, wrong simple) or really advanced (that was Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea). I winged one of his suggestions for apple varieties, 1/2 dessert (sweet) apples and 1/2 obscure English cider apple varieties that apparently don't do very well just about anywhere else. If you are interested I used about 1/2 sour apples (Granny Smith and Honeycrisp), 25% Gravenstein (my personal fav multitasker LOL) and 1/4 dessert apples - a mishmash of Jonathan, Fuji, and Gala.
I found this recipe the day I pressed my apples in late Oct. (fortunately) so I ran down to the local brew shop and picked up the ingredients, with the exception of 2 cups of honey which is ours and is mostly wildflowers (it's raw, we don't do anything to it, and the taste blows away everyone we give it to).
So I did as directed with a couple changes. I added Campden tablets to hopefully kill off the wild yeast, let them work a couple days then used the White Labs strain in the recipe. I re-racked after almost 3 weeks since it was burbling happily after 2 weeks and I didn't want to re-rack based on my homebrew experience with meads (a couple of which were absolute heaven and did very well in our state fair competitions). After it cleared up in a week or so I racked it again for a tertiary malic acid fermentation (technically I suppose it is a conversion, not really fermentation) using freeze dried LAB.
Then I left it sit in a cool room (temps of 40s - 50s all winter) until this week About 5 months to the day, 2 months later than I was planning on, unfortunately). I read this recommendation in the advanced apple cider book (craft cider making) vs. the 3 weeks or so in the recipe, I suppose that is a bit longer than is necessary but it didn't seem to have any ill effects and the taste is as stated below - very dry, dominant but not overpowering "sour apple", almost no sweet flavors and fairly light on the palate. Exactly what I was shooting for since I don't at all like either pucker your mouth dry English style or sweet hard ciders (sorry Sam Adams and the like but their ciders taste like fizzy hard apple candy to me!). So off to bottling today with some honey for priming & champagne yeast which is all I could find used specifically in any sparkling cider recipes (and is all I can get at the moment).
So after all that I wanted to say that it looks like this recipe will turn out quite excellent (it already tastes 100% better that my previous attempts none of which used cider yeast or a 3rd racking for malic acid fermentation). I wish I had thought to take the SG at each step but according to my old and probably miscalibrated hydrometer I hit the mark almost spot on, OG 1.055 & SG .995 as compared to 1.05 and FG 0.996 below. I make that out to about 7.75%, a little off the 8% I was shooting with the addition of the honey for but what I would expect given the 7% in the recipe.
I am going to try 1.5 oz. honey/gal. as suggested in 2 other posts here - about 2/3 cup for 4.5 gal (an estimate but I think it's pretty close). Unless someone has a better suggestion? I see that it won't effect the taste at all and that's fine with me.
So after all that blabbing .....THANKS FOR THE RECIPE!!! I'll use it next year if our bees survive the very late snow we have had for a week now that can wreak havoc with kept bees. We also keep mason bees for a backup in nasty spring weather so we are crossing our fingers that they aren't going to be affected.
BTW one thing I heard long time back was to let a bad batch of cider sit a couple years completely exposed to the air to make cider vinegar if you don't want to waste it. So I let my first disaster (or the second, I forget now LOL) to see what happened. I thought this was silly but what the heck I left it in a glass carboy I didn't need since 2002(!) When I went to make the current batch I followed the standard procedure of not letting anything I touched get anywhere near the new batch (A nail biter but it worked) and siphoned it off.
The gross "mother of vinegar" mat on the top had me convinced that it was going to be disgusting but it's the best cider vinegar we've ever had the pleasure of sipping LOL (and we happen to enjoy almost any fine vinegar in our salad dressings etc.). So you might want to try this instead of throwing a bad batch out and wasting all that effort brewing it. You can apparently save the gunk for years to use in another batch but I didn't want to roll the dice with the new batch that went into the same room. After we gave half it away the feedback from friends and family was pleasantly excellent
A friend has acres of blueberries and tried his first blueberry mead last summer, I made a knockout from his berries years ago and then an utter disaster, so now I'm motivated to try again this summer if he gets a winner
Had been wanting to do a nice dry cider, with noticeable apple notes to it, but not too much sweetness. This was a very simple recipe to put together, the key is to give this time to age, it can be less than pleasant the first month in the bottles. If you give it time, and wait 3 to 4 months, you will have an absolute stunner.
5 Gallons unfiltered Organic Apple Cider (from grocery store)
2 lbs local wildflower honey
1 tube White Labs #WLP775 Dry English Cider yeast
5 tsp Fermax yeast nutrient
OG 1.050
FG.996
ABV 7.04%
Beersmith put the SRM at 6.0, but I really feel that it is closer to a 3 or 4.
After sanitizing, I put the Cider right into the primary fermenter, no heating or boiling at all.
Warm the honey in about 2 cups of hot (150F) water to liquefy it, and add the Fermax to the honey / water mix. Don't boil the honey!
Let the honey mix cool a bit, and then add it to the primary. Pitch your yeast on top. When I did this, I did not use a starter, so it took several days for fermentation to kick off. Next time I will make a 1000mL starter. Shake the baby like mad to aerate!
Let sit on primary for 2 weeks. Rack into secondary for 1 week to clarify and let things settle out. I then racked into a bottling bucket, added in priming sugar and then into flip top bottles.
After 4 months, this is probably the best cider I have ever had. Beats Woodchuck and Ace all to hell. I was trying to copy the Samuel Smith Organic Cider and I would have to say that I am more than happy with what I have here.
Samuel Smith uses a wine yeast in the cider they make, but the White Labs I used worked wonderfully. Same crisp light flavor, dry, but not overly so.
I am going to get another batch of this going this week, after getting into several bottles this weekend, and having some friends and in-laws over, my stock is dwindling.