Angry orchard crisp cider

[fellatamas182]

Hey haven't found what I was looking for by typing in the title so thought I'd post see if anyone could give me some insight. Wife is "letting" me buy some more/new equipment but the deal is I have to brew her a cider. I usually do seasonals, Berliner Weisse, ipa, apa, stouts. Ciders is not a common one for me I've read some things online such as making your own press and so on. I'd like to avoid a lot of work if I don't do this style much down the line so I read about getting organic ciders without preservatives...but to get to the point her favorite cider is obviously angry orchard crisp. So trying to find a clone. Mainly something that might get near it yeast I know wine/champagne dries it out a bit and others s-04 make it somewhat sweeter so any help is appreciated so I can get some new toys and make better beer!

 

[UncleRusty]

I'm not a fan of most Angry Orchards personally, as I think that they're way too sweet and taste more like a malty apple juice mixed with cheap alcohol than actual cider. Their Dry Cider and Bomber bottles that I've tried have been pretty good in comparison though. Regardless, brewing cider is very simple compared to doing a beer. I'd recommend Edwort's Apfelwein recipe which consistently yields great results.

You also don't need to get Organic apple juice unless you really want to make a completely organic cider which would be very expensive. You just need to buy apple juice or cider which doesn't have potassium sorbate as a preservative, as this stalls fermentation of yeast almost completely. A lot of brands have absorbic acid (Vitiamin C), which is totally fine and has no effect on fermentation or flavour. I for example almost always brew with Old Orchard brand because it's cheap an pretty tasty for a store bought apple juice.

Aside from that, usually you add around 2lbs of sugar to a 5 gallon batch which will bump your ABV from ~5-6% up to ~8-9%, but that's totally up to you. Typically I like to use Nottingham dry ale yeast as it ferments completely dry to less than 1.000, and you can always backsweeten it if you want it to be semi-sweet or less dry. I've also experimented using Belgian T58 dry yeast recently, which ferments to around 1.01 and leaves a nice bit of residual sweetness along with some mild esters.

For fermentation, most people would likely agree that 2 months is the minimum, though you can go longer for something really smooth and complex, up to a year. If you just want something sweet like a commercial american cider that's more like juice, the fermentation time won't matter as much because the sugar will be the dominant flavour. Good luck!

 

[z-bob]

My wife really likes Angry Orchard Crisp too. I kind of like it, but it's a little too sweet. I fermented a few gallons of Kirkland and Great Value apple juice using Premier Cuvee yeast, and it tastes okay but is a little too dry.

So I mix a bottle of Angry Orchard with a bottle of my dry cider, and it's just right (plus I get twice as much)
I'm going to try fermenting straight apple juice again, but use T58 or S33 or 71B yeast next time for less attenuation.

 

[oljimmy]

Well, not to be the bearer of bad news for your Wife, but I can almost guarantee you that you won't make cider that tastes like Angry Orchard. "Cider" like that benefits from a large number of processes, including large-scale pasteurization which allows them to halt fermentation as they choose. The ingredients are mysterious: the first is something they call "Hard Cider", the second is "natural flavoring". No-one seems to know what "Hard Cider" is as an ingredient, but the insiders I've talked to claim that is is definitely not just fermented apple juice: "glucose wine" is a phrase one hears thrown around when discussing these mega-sweet brands.

Basically, your wife wants a fizzy sugar drink. To get close to this taste, you'll need to find a way to keep the final gravity at 1.020 or so (AO is 1.030). This can be done: add 2 lb of dextrose at the start of the batch, ferment in the low-60s, rack to bottling bucket when the gravity is 1.023 or so, bottle, open test bottles every day until desired carbonation is achieved, then bottle-pasteurize using Papper's method (see sticky). It probably won't taste too much like AO, but it will be apple-y fizzy booze, maybe even something you'll like more than AO. Good luck!

 

[Maylar]

Cloning a commercial cider isn't really practical. There's no "recipe" to follow.

What your wife wants is a sweet bubbly cider. You can make that, but it won't be an Angry Orchard clone. It'll be yours. That's the beauty of cider making - mine tastes as good or better than anything I've had commercially.

For Angry Orchard, the target would be cider that's sweetened to 1.025 SG and carbonated to about 2.6 volumes of CO2. How you get there depends on whether you will keg or not. And most of us find AO to be candy sweet, so we dial back the sugar at the end (mine is about 1.010).

 

[z-bob]

You can make some simple syrup (maybe even make it with apple juice) and add a squirt to your glass of dry bubbly cider to sweeten it. A little sugar also enhances the apple taste.

 

[javalin]

If you want a sweet carbonated cider you'll need to force carbonate your cider, or do something with artificial sweeteners and apple flavoring.

My basic recipe for an angry orchard clone
One gallon of apple juice (no preservatives, but doesn't have to be organic)
Add sugar to get a S.G. of about 1.08 (10% ABV) I'll switch between brown sugar, dex, and table sugar
ferment and allow to clear
pasteurize by heating to 150F for about 10 minutes
cool and mix with one gallon of apple juice
force carb
bottle, chill, and enjoy

 

[Silentdrinker]

Go to Costco, buy Kirkland juice. It's 100% apple juice and that's it. It's about a few pennies under $8 for two gallons.

Dump it in with some white wine tannin and some malic acid. Also use pectin enzyme if you want it clear.

Use a packet of Nottingham yeast

Ferment it out on the cold side, let it clear or cold crash it with gelatin.

Add potassium sorbate and back sweeten with apple juice concentrate and/or sugar until it tastes good to you/her.

Voila...it'll probably be better than angry orchards.

To make it even better add an oz of mosaic or Galaxy hops while it's cold. Let that sit a few days. I did 5 gallons of the hopped cider just like this for a small get together. It was gone in a few hours, and friends are still talking about it.

One friend had me make 10 gallons for his wedding in July.