Angry Orchard
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Sorry. Angry Orchard is like the Bud Light of the Cider world. Friends don't let friends drink fake cider.
They do use bittersweet apple juice in many of their varieties. Listen to the Ciderchat podcast where their head cider maker is interviewed. I enjoyed their Traditional Dry. I'd like to pick up some Stone Dry sometime. The others are too sweet for me, but unfortunately when you find it on tap it's one of the sweet ones.
Make my cider recipe in my drop down.
Then to each gallon of it, add 3 gallons water.
That should probably get you to a similar flavor and ABV.
(as i've not tried doing this)
That's going to be tough to do; mainly because it's about 5% ABV and kind of sweet. The yeast will want to ferment it totally dry, and if you backsweeten it you'll have to kill the yeast with sorbate and then it won't carb.
The closest you'll be able to do (without trying to pasteurize carbonated bottles, which is dangerous) is to make a dry sparkling cider and add sugar syrup when you serve it.
actech
Well-Known Member
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=265986
5 day country cider made it a few times cheap concentrate works well, I used s-33 yeast and used 2 pots when pasteurizing. it goes quick when I make it.
5 day country cider made it a few times cheap concentrate works well, I used s-33 yeast and used 2 pots when pasteurizing. it goes quick when I make it.
I made a sweet cider this year sort of on purpose and sort of on accident. What worked for me was cold fermentation around 55 F for a couple months, then when gravity hit ~1.015, I hit with gelatin, then kept refrigerated. Result is crystal clear and quite sweet, with no nutrient additions, pectinase, sorbate or sulfite used at all. Gelatin and patience are your friends.
It's actually too sweet for my taste, so next time I'll aim closer to 1.008 or so. I'm blending in the glass with another batch that turned out very tart and very dry though so it's all good. I always make 4 or 5 batches and blend. Blending is another friend.
Cheers!
P.S. Yeast? Cote des Blancs is the best friggin cider yeast on earth. I've experimented with many and it always turns out the best, hands down.
It's actually too sweet for my taste, so next time I'll aim closer to 1.008 or so. I'm blending in the glass with another batch that turned out very tart and very dry though so it's all good. I always make 4 or 5 batches and blend. Blending is another friend.
Cheers!
P.S. Yeast? Cote des Blancs is the best friggin cider yeast on earth. I've experimented with many and it always turns out the best, hands down.
@dmtaylor: was it still or sparkling? (sounds like still cider) I made some with S-04 and it finished too sweet and didn't carbonate. Not sure what I screwed up. I'm blending with it to use it up.
Mine is still. I don't get too excited about carbonating my ciders personally, it's not traditional and just isn't very necessary IMHO. If it carbonates all on its own in a few months, that would be fine, and if it doesn't, that's fine with me too. Nice thing about no sorbate and no sulfite is that it's still got a chance, and since the fermentation was so long, the yeast that remains is super tired and won't explode the bottles.
There are no recipes for cloning commercial ciders. First, because we have no way to duplicate the mix of apples that go into them and second because the processes that commercial cideries use aren't practical for the home cider maker.
The best you can do is to target a specific level of sweetness and carbonation and make some cider using the best juice you can find. A.O. for instance, is about 1.028 (very sweet) and about 3 volumes of CO2 (highly carbonated). You would have to keg to get there.
Phug made a thread comparing the sweetness levels of commercial ciders:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=488345
Thanks for that link! I sure wish I'd seen that thread earlier.... I could have contributed dozens of entries, and avoided a few disappointing purchases.
I like Angry Orchard. It's a little too sweet, but not much. You want something bad, try Smith Forge (I had no idea it's made by Miller) it's way too sweet and tastes like it's "enhanced" with fake apple flavoring. The only way to drink it is to mix it half-and-half with a BMC beer.
