Newbie

[Barnes06]

As I stated before I'm extra new at brewing so I have a couple questions for anyone that would be so kind to answer...

1.) Is it better/easier to learn how to make your own alcohol by making cider before I try to make beer?

2.) Are the steps as simple as boiling water, adding sugar and juice with yeast, letting it ferment and the freezing to separate?

3.) Does it matter really on what fruit I use?

4.) And lastly, can I just use store bought fruit juice or is it better to use fresh fruit and then press the juice out?


Any help would be appreciated

 

[Brewkowski]

-Is it easier to make cider than beer? Well it depends on what equipment you have and what you want to do. Essentially with cider and wine you mix cold ingredients and wait for much longer than beer. So it depends on when you want to drink your creation. Personally I'd start a cider and then brew a batch while it ages.
-I don't boil my ciders, and I don't freeze anything, just let fermentation do it's thing and rack it over a few times.
-I'm sure there are recipes for all sorts of fruit flavored ciders on the forum
- I always use store bought juice, but make sure there are NO PRESERVATIVES in it, and I'd stay away from anything with added corn syrup. I buy gallon jugs of pure apple cider or juice, they might have absorbic acid but that's ok.

Good luck.

 

[Barnes06]

Just curious but what is racking? SOrry I'm new at this?

 

[Kauai_Kahuna]

Racking, or decanting in wine terms is where you siphon from one container to another.
Once fermenation is done, you do NOT want air to be mixed in with the batch that just pouring from one container to another would do. Most people also want to move the batch off of the lee's or "stuff" that settles on the bottom of the primary fermentation.

Usually it is done by using a racking cane, IE a hard plastic tube, and a soft tube using gravity to move from the primary fermenter to the secondary. Or conditioning / clearing container.

If you do a youtube search on racking beer / wine your get a lot of visuals on how to do it.

 

[Edcculus]

1.) Beer is much more complicated in certain ways. That said, I started brewing beer and now brew cider too. I think brewing beer first give you a more methodical approach. I've noticed people who have never brewed beer before come to cider/wine with the "throw a bunch of crap together and let it ferment" attitude.

2.) Hmm, not really sure what you are talking about here...Cider is usually just fermented apple juice. Sometimes sugar is added to increase increase the alcohol potential. Freeze concentration is a technique used to make Apple Jack as well as Eisbock (a beer style). In any fermented product we discuss here, you will not ever end up with pure alcohol.

3.) Cider is fermented apple juice. Just like fermented grape juice is Wine, fermented pear juice is Perry and fermented honey is Mead. If you ferment other juices, it won't be cider.

4.) For good high quality cider, (just like wine) it is always better to use pressed fruit. That is not a possibility for about 95% of the country, so most of us are using store bought juice. If you can find a cider mill near you, it would be worth your while to buy fresh juice from them.