Peach Cider Recipe

I had great luck with my first peach cider attempt. It had to be luck because I never tried to brew cider. Prior to that I had been strictly a beer man.

Here is the recipe I'm using for a three gallon batch. It's a slight variation from my last attempt so, I can't guarantee the results. I suspect there are veteran cider makers here that could greatly improve on this recipe or method ...please join in, I'm eager to improve my methods and, more importantly, my product.

Things You will Need


The Process

Shell and quarter (or eighth) the peaches. Leave the skin, but be sure to take off the sticky labels if the peaches are from the store.

Put your peaches in the boiling pot.

Cover your peaches with water. (don't add too much)

Boil until the peaches break down. You want the peaches to literally fall apart. I do a vigorous stir every few minutes after the boil starts to help break down the peaches. This can take some time so don't plan on going anywhere for a few hours.

Stir contents occasionally to prevent burning the bottom.

After your peaches are near mush, remove from heat, and let it all cool to room temperature. I put my pot in the kitchen sink, add water to fill the sink, then add some ice to assist the cooling process.

Put the sugar into your fermenting container while waiting for the peach water to cool.

As soon as your peach water reaches room temperature, strain off the peach pulp collecting the liquid into your fermenting container using cheese cloth or other straining device. (Don't worry that some of the pulp from the peaches falls through.)

Stir the mixture in the fermenting bucket until your confident the sugar has dissolved. (It's okay to add some water to help.)

Add water to your fermenting vessel to equal approximately 3 gallons.

Pitch your yeast, and give the mixture another good stir.

Cover and attach your air trap.

Store in a room that maintains a constant temperature below 76 degrees.

When your air trap stops bubbling, rack (transfer) and strain your cider into smaller one gallon jars. Put a good lid on the jars.

I let my cider sit for two or three weeks in one gallon jars to clarify; you'll see the cider get clearer as sediment forms on the bottom. When I'm happy with the color of the cider, I bottle it into 12 oz containers, leaving the sediment behind. Some brewers will rack their cider another time. letting it sit for another week or two before bottling. Mason jars work well, but if you want sparkling cider, add 1 oz of sugar (7 teaspoons) to each gallon container, and dissolve the sugar before parting the cider into 12 oz bottles. It will take 7 to 10 days, at room temperature for the latent yeast to turn the sugar into CO2.

My last batch was amazing. Everyone who tired it wanted more. Like I said ... I think I got lucky.

Feel free to offer suggestions. I'm not emotionally attached to any of this.

Darko

Seems pretty good donnie. Any idea on the OG/FGs? Also if you wanted you could probaby mush the pulp up to get a bit more juice with a press or something like that.

I didn't take a reading prior to starting this last batch ... so no way to know, but I will tell you that with the last batch .. similar to this one, the alcohol content was close to 7%.


Darko

Did you use campden tabs or anything to kill the natural yeast?

No, I didn't use anything to kill the natural yeast. At what point in the process would one do that?

I think right at the start. Before you pitch the yeast, though I've never done it.

I just started a batch of this last weekend, only I made 1G.

How long did you leave it in the primary? It's been a week and its stopped bubbling...but I think I'll let it sit for another week maybe before racking it. Thoughts??

I'm a newb, and could easily be missing something, but by cooking the peaches doesn't that set the pectin? So you end up with a cloudy cider? Or am I mistaken?

Thank you!

This sounded so good I had to try it. Just finished putting it together tonight. I went with 5gal instead of the 3. Just made the changes to the amount of sugar and peaches. 15 lbs of peaches and 5lbs of sugar gives a reading OG 1.60. 8% if I let the yeast eat all the sugar. 2 things I'm doing different is I filled a grain bag or cheese cloth bag which ever one might have with some of the peaches left over and put it in the fermenter. Hoping it will give a stronger peach flavor. And also adding some yeast nutrient.

Booker

Hi Booker140, Looks like you are resurrecting a long dead thread. But that said, boiling fruit is perhaps what brewers do. They love to cook what they ferment. Wine makers tend to avoid cooking fruit unless they are making jams or compotes. If you want to extract juice from fruit it is usually far better to freeze the fruit - that breaks the cells walls allowing far more juice to be extracted - and you would add pectic enzyme to break down the pectins (cooking, of course, does quite the opposite - it sets them: think jam). Pectic enzymes tend to be inhibited or even denatured by alcohol so you would add the enzymes about 12 hours before you pitch the yeast (12 hours AFTER you added K-meta to kill any wild yeast unless your plan was for a wild fermentation..)
Peaches tend to be flavor thin, so you may need to double or even triple the amount of peaches you use per gallon. But to each their own. Good luck.

mcevoy said:

Did you use campden tabs or anything to kill the natural yeast?

Click to expand...

I would think the boiling of the peaches would kill any natural yeast on them.

Thanks for the tips bernardsmith. I thought boiling the peaches would kill the wild yeast too.

Booker