First brewing attempt in years and my recipe... thoughts?

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Windaria

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OK... I used to brew stuff when I was about 16 (kind of hard to buy at that age after all) and haven't even thought about it in years. Well, I happened upon talk of making your own mead, and I decided I would try it out again. Instead of mead though, I decided to go for a cider, and while trying to figure out what recipe I would use I took a lot of elements from the mead recipe I was planning (still intend on making it, we shall see), and I am wondering if anyone has any thoughts regarding my recipe:

******

Apples, 2 each:
Rome
Pink Lady
Braeburn
Granny Smith
Jonagold
Fuji
McIntosh
Cameo

3 gallons pasturized non-preserved apple juice
1.5 gallons apple juice from concentrate (water, concentrate, ascorbic acid)
1 ounce crushed cinamon sticks
2.5 tbsp nutmeg
6 lemons
Water to 6 gallons
.75 cup green tea leaves
1 cup sugar
2 packages champagne yeast

Juiced apples and lemons and brought them to a boil along with the pulp from the apples as well as the green tea leaves, cinamon, and nutmeg. Added apple juice to fill the pot and, when it started boiling, dumped into 6 gallon carbody. Added the rest of the juice then boiled the water and added that to the carbody until full.

Shook carbody and poured some of the juice into a glass. Added yeast and sugar and watched the yeast start to bubble then added it back into the carbody and shook it again. Corked carbody and added the airlock.

******

I figure it would be like a hard cider with a hint of lemon and green tea... any thoughts? I juiced the apples to give it a varietal taste, and figured they might give it some mixed overtones to go with my (bloody expensive) 3 gallons of prime juice and the 1.5 gallons of cheap stuff, to round out the flavor a bit, and then naturally the cinamon and nutmeg for some spice (which I figure will mellow over the year or so that it will likely sit until I drink it).

Anyway, I threw it all into the carbody about an hour ago and am waiting to see my first bubbles. It started bubbling when it was in the cup, just waiting for it to do it from the carbody. <smiles>
 
You need to add some pectic enzyme to work on the pectin you set when you boiled the must. You can add it now.
 
pectic enzyme? The guy at the homebrew store said that he doesn't add that for hard cider, but that he does it for other fruits... just not for apple juice.

And I did only boil the apples and 1 of the 3 gallons of the good stuff. Is it really necessary for that?

Also I was wondering... will the acidity from the lemons be too much with the apple juice? I figure that they do make had lemonade, in the same way they make hard cider... but at the same time I have heard people warning others about having too much acidity...
 
You can test the ph with litmus paper available at your HBS. I must disagree with the person that said that you don't need the pectic enzyme for apples. When you boiled the must, you set protiens (pectin). This is the stuf that makes jelly thick. You don't have to use the pectic enzyme but your cider will be cloudy because of the set pectin in it.
 
Also... I really didn't boil it for long. I pretty much brought the water to the point where it was really hot and started to bubble then dumped it in. I know that for true pasturization you need to hold it there for a while, but I figured that the heat might have been enough to kill at least some of the stuff...

Was this maybe a huge mistake?
 
Not really. Most folks don't boil their must to prevent the pectin set but there's enzyme to take care of it if you choose to go that route. Personally, I prefer your way to camdem tablets.
 
And see... that's the thing, I was really, really trying to avoid any chemicals whatsoever. Yeah, I know most think they're fine, but any additives... well. Heck, for my yeast nutrient I added 1 multivitamin per gallon. The guy was trying to sell me some prefab yeast nutrients, and then offhandedly mentioned that it is the same stuff as multivitamins, to a large degree, and that some people just add 1 per gallon so I figured "There we go, I'll just do that", and so I did... still waiting for it to start bubbling.
 
Dude, don't take any more advice from that guy. Yeast nutrient is not the same as a multivitamin.

Read these: http://consumer.lallemand.com/danstar-lalvin/fermaidwine.html

http://consumer.lallemand.com/danstar-lalvin/fermaid.html

http://www.fallbright.com/YeastNutrients.htm

So tell me, how much diammonium phosphate is in that multivitamin. How about yeast hulls? Yeast nutrient is a vitamin for the yeast but yeast's requirements are not the same as yours.

This is what I use in my beer wort: http://www.yeastbank.com/features/servo.htm
http://www.whitelabs.com/servomyces.html
 
Well he seemed to indicate that there would be a lot of extra things in the multi... but yeah, while it has most of what is mentioned, it doesn't have all of what is mentioned that the yeast needs... so oh well. Guess I should grab some nutrient and throw it in there when I pick up a cork to start a second batch.

At first, I read so many posts about people saying "avoid concentrate". Since getting the juice to start this batch, I have now started to read a lot of posts from people who say that they use nothing but concentrate... so I figure I will get another batch going with pretty much the same ingredients, only using just concentrate instead of juice, just to compare the two.

Anything else I should likely look at doing?
 
Woo hoo! It started bubbling like made around 1 am (so reports the wife) and is still going. I am so happy. <smiles>
 
I tried to reply but I don't see my reply anywhere here... so trying again.

Anyway, I just started my 2nd 6 gallon cider batch, and for that I am doing the same recipe but instead of apples or juice I am using 16 things of frozen apple juice concentrate (roughly enough to make 6 gallons of juice) so we shall see what happens, and if it can compare. Woo hoo!
 
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