Agree that in the future, I need to focus more on producing a good basic cider before adding in sweeteners or other chemicals and try to get a nice tasting reproducible recipe. Overall, eliminating any corn sugar, varying the yeasts and apple blends, and stopping fermentation are all on the roadmap for this fall.
This year, aside from the fermentation to dryness, came out pretty good. Nice apple bouquet, although one can feel the alcoholic heat in one's chest as it goes down (hi-test). Being manic about cleaning and sanitizing, knocking down the alcohol potential to make a cider rather than a wine, as well as letting the cider mellow for 6+ months have all helped.
I have a triple hydrometer; sorry about the numeric confusion - the numbers come from the Balling scale which I refer to as BRIX. If the apples start out at 10 BRIX I boost it to 14 but this year I will not use any corn sugar as you suggest and keep things simple (and the cider slightly less alcoholic). My original mentor was a wine maker; without knowing any better, I started using corn sugar to get a higher alcohol potential and actually made apple wine.
I ferment in my basement in upstate NY which is quite cool. Logistically, this place is 200 miles away from my main residence which makes it hard to keep daily tabs on progress. Temps even in the summer are around 60 degrees. Not sure what the optimal temp is to ferment - someone mentioned around 66 degrees but cooler temps slow the process down and is recommended. Aside from being able to get upstate and keep better tabs on the progress, I think that I covered with the cool basement for fermentation. Once finished and bottled, I store the bottles in my basement in my main house which is around 62 degrees.
Forgot to mention earlier that the presser has just introduced a UV pasteurizer last year so my juice is pasteurized. I suppose that I could try a batch unpasteurized or does it make much of a difference with the taste?
Ideally, I would like to stop the fermentation process and end up with some of the natural apple flavor without having to back sweeten. Thanks for the suggestions.
- Never heard of cold-crashing but I don't have refrigeration capability to do any more than a couple of gallons at a time. What if I got a top loading freezer and brought the temp down, not to freezing, but enough so that the yeasts fall to the bottom and then rack? I am going to need a top loader to freeze some of the unfermented apple juice so this might be a way to go using a 5 gal plastic carboy.
- The referenced post also suggests racking several times before the must has a chance to ferment to dryness. Suppose that this depends on the type of yeast used. Won't there always be some residual yeast left that will eventually eat all the sugar or will lowering the temp below a certain threshold point kill all the yeast? In the winter, the house is winterized and the temp in the basement gets below freezing. This hasn't seemed to hurt anything.
Obtaining different yeasts is doable but getting different apple varieties may be a problem since I have been getting 800 pounds from a packing house to save some money. I'll ask them about different varieties that they may have available but I usually just take what they give me. I do have a manual crusher and double ratcheting press for smaller batches - maybe this year the wild apples will produce.
Thanks for taking the time to offer suggestions.