Hey all,
I just started making cider and wanted to say a few things about my first batch and had a few questions of how to proceed.
I started off with 5 gallons of pasteurized cider from a local orchard and used the one gallon starter technique. I drained about a glass of cider out of one of the gallons and let it warm up to room temp, then pitched my yeast and left it go for a few hours. I used the Brewer's Best Premium Cider House yeast packet from LHS. These little guys wasted no time in getting to work. The next day I let all the cider warm up to room temp and dumped them into a five gallon carboy. Pretty uneventful "brew day" to say the least.
The yeast started chugging away in about 12 hours. I let it ferment in my basement which stays a constant 65*F and had great luck and furious fermentation for almost a full week. Once it slowed significantly I left it alone to clear a bit.
Flash Forward 3 weeks. I just transferred the much clearer and great smelling cider to a secondary. I boiled a little water and added K-meta and K-sorb to kill fermentation, added to secondary and racked on top of it. I also took a FG reading which came in just under 1.000 (let's say .999). With an OG of 1.050 it looks like I'm about 6.5% ABV. I also sampled the cider i drew for gravity readings. It smells great, really clear with almost no apple flavor whatsoever. I'd call it a wine but its not flavorful enough to be in that class of beverage. Also it doesn't taste too "hot" which I'm pretty happy about.
So now my questions: I want to backsweeten this with some Frozen Aj concentrate and keg it up. I think it will be pretty clear in 2-3 days and I have 2 tubes of FAJC in the freezer as we speak. Is this too much/not enough? I want some of the apple flavor back in it and I'd like to sweeten it up a bit like Magner's or other commercially available ciders. I like it dry but think it will be more palatable with some sweet back in it.
I guess my second question is this: Does anyone see where I made any glaring mistakes that I can learn from going forward? Anything I did that I don't need to do in the future?
All in all this has been a great experiment and, if it turns out well, will only be due to the knowledge I've learned from this forum. You guys/gals are great.
I just started making cider and wanted to say a few things about my first batch and had a few questions of how to proceed.
I started off with 5 gallons of pasteurized cider from a local orchard and used the one gallon starter technique. I drained about a glass of cider out of one of the gallons and let it warm up to room temp, then pitched my yeast and left it go for a few hours. I used the Brewer's Best Premium Cider House yeast packet from LHS. These little guys wasted no time in getting to work. The next day I let all the cider warm up to room temp and dumped them into a five gallon carboy. Pretty uneventful "brew day" to say the least.
The yeast started chugging away in about 12 hours. I let it ferment in my basement which stays a constant 65*F and had great luck and furious fermentation for almost a full week. Once it slowed significantly I left it alone to clear a bit.
Flash Forward 3 weeks. I just transferred the much clearer and great smelling cider to a secondary. I boiled a little water and added K-meta and K-sorb to kill fermentation, added to secondary and racked on top of it. I also took a FG reading which came in just under 1.000 (let's say .999). With an OG of 1.050 it looks like I'm about 6.5% ABV. I also sampled the cider i drew for gravity readings. It smells great, really clear with almost no apple flavor whatsoever. I'd call it a wine but its not flavorful enough to be in that class of beverage. Also it doesn't taste too "hot" which I'm pretty happy about.
So now my questions: I want to backsweeten this with some Frozen Aj concentrate and keg it up. I think it will be pretty clear in 2-3 days and I have 2 tubes of FAJC in the freezer as we speak. Is this too much/not enough? I want some of the apple flavor back in it and I'd like to sweeten it up a bit like Magner's or other commercially available ciders. I like it dry but think it will be more palatable with some sweet back in it.
I guess my second question is this: Does anyone see where I made any glaring mistakes that I can learn from going forward? Anything I did that I don't need to do in the future?
All in all this has been a great experiment and, if it turns out well, will only be due to the knowledge I've learned from this forum. You guys/gals are great.
