Add shredded apple to cider?

[CanFarmer]

Hi all -

I have about 5 gallon buckets of apples (tart, juicy) from my little tree.

Just getting ready to put on another 5 gal of cider. My recipe is:

3 Gal Sunrype pure apple juice.
About 3 cans apple juice concentrate.
Top up to 5 gal with filtered water.
About 2lbs sugar.
Lalvin EC1118 and nutrient.

I was wondering if I could just peel and core these apples, chop them up in the food processor, and add them to my fermenting bucket to add some fresh tart apple taste and a little fresh juice. I am assuming all the apple bits would just settle out to the bottom.

Any insight/comments would be appreciated!

 

[Adolphus79]

Instead of using 5 gallons of apple juice and putting some of your apples in, why not juice your apples, and then top off with the apple juice. If you have a food processor, you could try processing your apples, then adding some water and juice to that. I'm not sure how many you have, but as far as juicing goes, you'll get about a gallon of juice for every 15 pounds of apples. How many pounds of apples do you have?

Also, if you're going for a classical 'New England style' hard cider, you won't want to add any sugar to that mix at all.

If you go this route, process your apples with a little water, top off with the apple juice, add pectic enzyme, and let it sit in primary for 24 hours, then throw the yeat, and stir daily for about a week. Rack to secondary, then rack again about once a month til you're satisfied (3-12 months).

If this doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry, I just bottled my first batch of Apfelwein tonight...

 

[landhoney]

I tried to think of a quick way to explain my experiences doing this but I couldn't. So basically what I'll say is that I tried it and it didn't work well. The pulp, in my experience, doesn't add anything. What you want is the juice. We make all apple wine/cider at work by freezing and then thawing the apples, then into the press. Freezing/thawing is a great way to get nice clean juice from an apple without oxidation from chopping/grinding. I think what you could do is freeze/thaw then into the food proccesor for a quick chop, and then strain it through maybe a grain bag or something. It won't be as clear a juice as pressing it, but I know most people don't have a wine/apple press. Hope this helps.

 

[CanFarmer]

I wish I could easily juice. The food processor just chops it up finely, it doesn't separate the juice. That's why I'm hoping I can just leave the pulp in the fermenter along with the juice. I probably have 15 lbs of apples.

What does the freeze/thaw do? Just allow more of the juice to be squeezed from the chopped pulp?

Thanks for the hints.

 

[landhoney]

What does the freeze/thaw do? Just allow more of the juice to be squeezed from the chopped pulp?

That's exactly what it does, they become soft enough that when we press them we're left with flat discs of whole apple skin. Its amazing. I think if you froze/thawed them and then just broke them up in the food processor for a couple seconds and then dumped the resulting pulp/juice through a strainer(grain bags might work, think giant pantyhose) you could get the juice w/o the pulp. Maybe.
The other problem I didn't mention with the pulp is even if you rack off it, it still absorbs a lot of liquid, its not dry, so you're going to lose some/alot.

 

[CanFarmer]

Good advice, thanks. Is a grain bag something available from homebrew supplier? (edit: a bit of Googling told me: yes!)