Pressed Cider Question

This weekend I'm planning to be pressing about 5-10 gallons of apple cider at a local orchard.

I am very interested in turning all of it into hard cider. However, I am curious on if there is anything extra I should be adding to it since it is coming straight from a press, as opposed to juice from a store. Thanks!

-Macrorie

Nope nothing different... Add Campden tablets, wait 24 hours, add yeast.

You can go with a "wild" yeast fermentation fairly easily with fresh pressed juice. However I always reccommend the campden route especially if you are new to cider as you have a way to recreate you final grand masterpiece verses the wild route in which you have no idea what yeast will take hold or even how good it is.

I would get nutrients to add a couple days after fermentation takes hold.

Macrorie said:

This weekend I'm planning to be pressing about 5-10 gallons of apple cider at a local orchard.

I am very interested in turning all of it into hard cider. However, I am curious on if there is anything extra I should be adding to it since it is coming straight from a press, as opposed to juice from a store. Thanks!

-Macrorie

Click to expand...

Yeah, add potassium metabisulfate (k-meta), also known as campden tablets (like dave said). 1 tablet per gallon should do it. It shocks the yeast and bacteria and stabilizes the juice so no unwanted fermenters are doing anything in there. After 24 hours, you can add yeast. Also, when you add the yeast, you can add pectic enzyme. This will facilitate a super-clear final product, if you care about that. Otherwise it might be cloudy. I like using pectic enzyme just because I like seeing crystal clear cider.

That's about it, other than messing with the gravity via sugar additions. I just picked up 5 gallons of cider yesterday and it was at 1.045 OG. Not high enough for me! So I added .75lbs of dextrose and .75lbs of sucrose, and .25lbs of lactose. My OG right now is 1.060, just where I want it. The dextrose and sucrose will ferment almost completely out (my first cider of the year went from 1.065 to 1.001), and I wanted this one to be a little sweeter, so I added the lactose, which won't be fermentable by the beer yeast I'll be using.

Last is your yeast selection. If you want a great rundown on this, check out Kevin's excellent experiments (this is the guy who essentially got me into cider making, and gets me my juice, and is a cider f*cking MASTER!)

Evan! said:

That's about it, other than messing with the gravity via sugar additions. I just picked up 5 gallons of cider yesterday and it was at 1.045 OG. Not high enough for me!

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Not enough for me either. What I've been pressing is consistently between 1.055 and 1.065

Here is another link to a great cider maker and blog. These are nice instructions for a good dry hard cider.

<The Apple Press at LostMeadowVT.com>

Loads of thanks for all of the quick and helpful advice! I really appreciate it! Can't wait to be enjoying some delicious hard cider ........ .