You guys are driving me crazy...LOL

I am about to do my first cider. Firstly I will say that these forums are great however I am having trouble finding a pattern to the cider recipes/advise?? I am hearing alot of conflicting advise. Use Dextrose....no wait brown sugar..no wait apple concentrate. Use wine, champagne, ale yeast?? Pectin, campden tablets, patuerized vs. non-pastuerized. Rack to secondary...or leave it in primary. Cold crash after reaching target gravity....no wait leave it be for a month or longer then bottle. Prime with dextrose, brown sugar, or more concentrate...or nothing?? Perhaps I am just experiencing alot of differing...however neither wrong nor right opinions. Perhaps its just a matter of experimenting to ones taste? However....for my first time can someone give me maybe 3 or 4 golden rules to follow. Per my other post here is what I am working with. My goal is actually to duplicate Strongbow...maybe not this time but work toward that.

-5 gallons unpastuerized
-Not sure if I can get campden tablets
-Access to any sugar, concentrate, etc.
-Access to most basic types of yeast

Thanks

Dave

The reason you find conflicting advise is that it pretty much all works pretty well.... unless your apple juice happens to have significant amounts of so-called "rogue apples"... such as Pourri apples. Those will destroy your cider. Definitely avoid any juices that have a label stating, "contains pourri apples". And you'd better pray that the juice you buy doesn't have them.. whether it's listed or not!

Cider is all about what you want it to taste like.
ie you use wine yeast. it will be dryer then if you use ale yeast.
Use some sugar. must juice has an OG about 1.050 or somewhere in that range.

Everything else is up to you.

I am doing a batch now with a hefeweizen yeast and dextrose. its at 1.026 now and is still super sweet. so ill let it chug along a little more.

Good luck with the strongbow clone. Your first step is to figure out what they use for apples and in what proportions. Its not an easy task. But don't let this stop you. Someone does need to do it.

I don't use dextrose when making beer because of the "cidery" flavour of the end product, and that's exactly why I'm using dextrose as an addition to the fermentable sugars in the AJ. I'll be using dextrose to prime my cider just because it's cheap, the consensus is that priming sugar isn't used in a large enough quantity to affect the taste.

As for yeast I'll be using Wyeast: Weihenstephan Weizen 3068 because I'm looking for something sweet like cider rather then dry like wine.

Cider production starts here:

Method A: Juice + wild yeast => probably ok

Method B: Juice + Known yeast => likely better cider

Method C: Juice + campden + known yeast => better cider

Method D: Juice + sugar + campden + known yeast => stronger cider

Gets more complicated, but millions of gallons of drinkable cider have been made using Method A.

I was in the same boat a few weeks ago, being new to brewing. I like reading and seeing what everyone else is doing to try to get some direction, but in the end i decided to just do 'something' already, and stop worrying if it's the right thing or not. A couple gallons of apple juice and a packet of yeast isn't much of a loss if it doesn't turn out the way you want.

So far my Wyeast 3068 apfelwein smells more like vinegar, but the samples have tasted good. I'm still trying to figure out if i should let it ferment all the way out, or find some way to stop it at a sweetness i like.

As far as golden rules go, I think there is only 1 - just brew something!

Hey, if you get a dead on drop dead clone of strongbow, please post it. While it's not my top choice, I do drink a lot of it when I'm on vacation. (Can't get it here at a reasonable price).
Golden rules - Sanitize, Temperature control, patience.
I have two out of three, is that good enough?