1st time making cider from apples - lil help?

[buMbLeB]

Ok so I've been around awhile and done several apple wines, ginger beer and cider from store bought juice, among other things. I've almost always used lalvin 1118, despite it being deprecated for cider I've liked it just fine. I've never used any sulphites or sorbates, I have (gasp!) boiled my juice, and then I've either fermented dry or cold crashed and carbonated the residual sugars in PET soda bottles.

However, I was recently at the lake, and had the tremendous good fortune to discover a wild apple tree! Me & the SO managed to harvest and hike out with ~ 80-100 lbs of what look and taste like miniature Granny Smith apples. I borrowed a small personal juicer, and now am ready to begin my first from-scratch apple cider, and since I don't have fridge room for that many apples I have to start soon. So I have some questions:

- sorbates/ sulphites: I'm aware of Campden tabs, and I think I can also buy other formulations at the brew store. Which one/ combo should I go with? I intend to ferment dry and then carbonate with a little sugar. I have a general understanding of the process, but welcome input.
- yeast, which one? I've been content with 1118 but I know it's frowned upon for fruit, and I don't plan to add sugar to increase abv this time, as I normally do with store juice. I know I have access to safale s04, 05 and various ale yeast. Any advice for green apple cider?
- I normally consume the cider I make within a few weeks, but with this batch I'd like to age it. Does this create any other considerations?

Any other advice is very welcome! I'm heading to the brew store tomorrow and then the grand experiment will begin.

 

[ebstauffer]

Have you dropped a bit of juice in a refractometer? It'd be good to know what you're starting with.

 

[buMbLeB]

Have you dropped a bit of juice in a refractometer? It'd be good to know what you're starting with.

I only have a hydrometer, and I won't know until I start juicing the apples tomorrow, by which time I'll have visited the brew store to get sulphites etc, and also yeast.

 

[Yooper]

I just saw this, and am heading off to bed, but this could help a bit: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=508303

You definitely want to sulfite the must. I don't juice my apples, as they are better when fermented when pressed so there is still some "good stuff" in there. When I didn't have a press, I just froze the apples (so they get mushy), and then thawed in big huge mesh bags and sulfited and went on. Then pressed by lifting out and squeezing the bags, getting out as much as I could, on about day 5.

 

[buMbLeB]

I just saw this, and am heading off to bed, but this could help a bit: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=508303

You definitely want to sulfite the must. I don't juice my apples, as they are better when fermented when pressed so there is still some "good stuff" in there. When I didn't have a press, I just froze the apples (so they get mushy), and then thawed in big huge mesh bags and sulfited and went on. Then pressed by lifting out and squeezing the bags, getting out as much as I could, on about day 5.

Thanks for the link, will read ASAP. I don't have a press and have way too many apples to freeze or fridge so all hope likes in my juicer. But I do understand it keeps pulp too, so I'll add it back. Meanwhile, I'm very interested in yeast suggestions.

 

[MindenMan]

4184 Sweet Mead Yeast does fantastic things with fresh juice and if you are staying below 12%ABV it will ferment out dry. If fermentation temps are kept below 60*F this yeast develops fantastic stone fruit flavors in the must. It is all I use anymore, and I use it for hard cider, apple wine, ice cider and apple jack. It is a liquid, but your LHBS should carry it or be willing to order it for you..

 

[buMbLeB]

4184 Sweet Mead Yeast does fantastic things with fresh juice and if you are staying below 12%ABV it will ferment out dry. If fermentation temps are kept below 60*F this yeast develops fantastic stone fruit flavors in the must. It is all I use anymore, and I use it for hard cider, apple wine, ice cider and apple jack. It is a liquid, but your LHBS should carry it or be willing to order it for you..

Thank you! That's exactly the sort of Intel I was hoping for.

 

[bernardsmith]

71B has an affinity for malic acid so that is my go to yeast for cider..

 

[Drewed]

4184 needs to be kept cool durring ferment of you can get some off fussels. Cool as in under 68. Nottingham ale has never failed me, but is nothing special. I had a good brew using an Abby triple yeast, but bumped the avb because the yeast could handle it. My last batch was with a ale yeast from a particular Irish brewer that is usually used to make a very dark beer.

 

[buMbLeB]

4184 needs to be kept cool durring ferment of you can get some off fussels. Cool as in under 68. .

Thanks for the info, this is actually the yeast I end up going with as it's the one they had at the beer shop. It's summer where I am right now, so while I can keep it under that temperature most of the time, I can't run air conditioning 24/7. My other option is to use the lalvin 1118 I always have on hand. Any suggestions? I'll probably be juicing apples for the rest of the day, and then pitching the yeast sometime tonight.

 

[MindenMan]

Do you have an unused bathtub, do you have a large clean trashcan? There are lots of ways to keep your must cool without having to power chill your house or apartment. Ice bottles, blue-ice, a tee shirt draped over as an evaporative cooler.

 

[madscientist451]

You might want to ferment some of the juice, but reserve some, freeze it in jugs for use later in the season as an ingredient in a late season cider. If the flavor is like granny smith then they are a high acid apple? You may get a high acid out of balance cider.
I usually don't sulfite the must when making my own juice, the wild yeast doesn't seem to hurt anything, I also do a 100% wild yeast cider every year that usually comes out pretty good.
I experimented with a Breville Juicer and wasn't happy with the results, but I only tried once with one kind of apples. My juicer is the kind that separates the juice and pulp, and the juice yield was pretty low and had a high amount of solids in it. The pulp still contained a lot of juice. If I use it again I might put all the pulp in a bag and place that in the juice in a bucket to extract some more flavor.
Grinding the apples, letting the pulp sit 24 hours and then pressing gives you better flavor than juicing, in my opinion.
Depending how hard your apples are, you may want to let them age a little and soften up.
My favorite cider yeast is Brewer's best cider house select, but WL 002 English Ale yeast works pretty good as well.
If your cider comes out good, you could go back to the tree in late winter, take some cuttings and graft it onto some root stock, maybe you've found a new variety?

 

[Drewed]

..... My other option is to use the lalvin 1118 I always have on hand....

. Ahhhh! Don't use 'The Hammer' on cider! It will blow all the flavor out. Use the 4184. It will be fine.

 

[buMbLeB]

help Help HELP!!!

Thank you everyone for your input, but I now have a much more immediate situation - despite adding what I believe was the appropriate measure of Campden tablets, I have nonetheless returned home the next day to find my airlock merrily bubbling away, despite not yet having added any yeast!

As I see it, there are two things to consider: 1) assuming it's the wild yeast that's somehow taken off, should I now let it roll and see whether the Okanagan's natural flora can make a good cider, or should I add my 4184 mead yeast anyway, either after somehow killing the wild stuff or just on top of; and 2) did the campden tabs somehow stress the wild yeast even though they didn't kill it, making it evil and ruining my cider?

Please help! Any advice or thoughts are appreciated, I imagine time is of the essence.

 

[madscientist451]

You have several options:
-Don't do anything, just let the wild yeast run and see what happens.
-You can pitch your mead yeast and hope for the best
-you can heat the juice to 180F , let it cool then pitch your commercial yeast
-You could get some jugs and do all of the above and then compare the results later; don't worry, cider makes itself..If it were me, I'd probably divide it and make a wild yeast and pitch the mead yeast in the other half.

 

[buMbLeB]

If it were me, I'd probably divide it and make a wild yeast and pitch the mead yeast in the other half.

Thanks, this is what I'm going to do. However the floor is still open if others have ideas or opinions. I'm especially curious to know why the campdens were seemingly ineffective - it was my first time using them, and I added 1 crushed tab per approximate 1 gallon of juice, adding more as I made more juice.

 

[Maylar]

Crushed campden tablets are notoriously difficult to dissolve. I always stir them in a glass jar until I'm sure they're dissolved before pouring that into my cider. I suspect that you didn't stir enough.

Even so, I've had wild yeast go active after a few days if I got lazy about pitching my yeast.

 

[Drewed]

If you have the room, you could coke crash the part the wild ferment befor racking off the part your going to dump the mead yeast on. Should make life easier on the mead yeast. Even so, your going to end up with a blend.

 

[buMbLeB]

Update: so my mead yeast "smack pack" was slow to activate - again, I've never used them before - so I had to wait overnight to pitch. Meanwhile I siphoned off an imperial gallon into a carboy to keep as a wild yeast version. This morning I woke to find that it had completely blown off the airlock, which was held on with a screw cap! So there is certainly something going on.

The smell is ... interesting. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it has notes of cider, rotting apple and nail polish. Yum, right? But as the saying goes, "the experiment requires you to continue", so we'll see what eventually results from all this. I did pitch the mead yeast into the remaining ~3gallons in my bucket, and so that might do something else again.

 

[biochemedic]

I didn't stumble on this thread until just now, so some of this may be too little/too late, but here's my $0.02 worth...

I've been lucky over the years to have found sources for fresh pressed (literally, right off the press and/or directly from the holding tank) cider. I've never sulfited the juice...but I do add a very healthy, active starter of yeast the first day, as soon as my cider gets up to pitching temp (usually is cooler to start, just from the outside ambient temps). I've occasionally seen some additional fermentation start *after* the brewing yeast has seemed to finish. At that point I fully stabilize with both sorbate AND metabisulfite. I generally put in some minimal backsweetening, and I keg too, so I'm fortunate not to have to worry about bottle conditioning.

My opinion on yeast? White Labs English Cider yeast - WLP775, hands down. I've tried various mead yeasts as well as 71B, and the 775 beats them all when it comes to fermenting apples. I use it for both cider and cyser now.

FWIW, you don't necessarily need to see a smack pack to swell before you use it. Depending on the volume and gravity of your ferment though, you might want to be doing a starter with liquid yeast.

Don't worry about the smell... a lot of those smells will ferment away. I've done a number of natural ferments as well, and they often smell pretty funky, and occasionally look even weirder, but the ones I've done have come out pretty amazing in the end!

 

[buMbLeB]

I didn't stumble on this thread until just now, so some of this may be too little/too late, but here's my $0.02 worth...!

Nope! Of course I've already started down my path, but this is still great info. Especially because I know exactly where that tree is, and I plan on going back next year and improving on whatever I get this time. I'm super appreciative of you and everyone else who took time to help me out.

Btw I think I identified the source of the "funky" smell - it's not the juice, it's the fine foam cap that made it through the juicer and floats on the juice. I'm now actively scooping it off, and everything already smells way better. Fingers crossed!