Basic Cider Instructions Needed!

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Dave77

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I was in the grocery store last week and saw apple juice on sale, so on a whim I bought 5 gallons of the stuff knowing I had an empty fermenting pail at home. So, I dumped all the juice in the bucket, pitched a package of S04 yeast with some yeast nutrient, and sealed it up. The airlock has been bubbling well, so fermentation seems to be good!

However....

I really have no idea what I'm doing to finish it. I've read a bunch of threads (thanks for everyone's input!) and Youtube videos, but there doesn't seem to be any tried-and-true rules of thumb that I can discern. So, to get very basic, I need to know:

1) How long should I let the cider ferment before bottling?
2) I plan to bottle condition the cider, so how much dextrose should I add? (or should I use more apple juice to condition?)


At this point I don't care about back sweetening or adding things like cinnamon, I just want to see how it turns out on my first attempt at cider.

Thanks in advance!
 
Sounds like you're off to a solid start. I'd use apple juice to carb it...adds flavor. Your juice should have grams of sugar per serving size on the nutrition label so you can calculate how much to use (I'd say 4.5 oz of sugar per 5 gallons) but you'll also need to account for the additional volume of the priming juice. Good luck!
 
I’ve been making one gallon batches of cider over the past year. I primarily use the gallon size to avoid expensive mistakes—after 16 batches, I’m still experimenting and learning.

I use glass jars or jugs for fermentation, and I try to rack to secondary at about 3-4 weeks (after verifying constant SG readings over a week). I will let the ciders sit in secondary for about 6 weeks, or sometimes longer. I’ve found that longer times in secondary and bottle conditioning have improved the flavor. Bulk conditioning in secondary has been of most benefit—the clarity really improves over time, too.

I use glass jars mainly for the convenience—it’s easy to keep them in a cool room in the house—and they’re cheap to source. There might be oxygen implications if you are using a plastic pail—I’ve read posts that talk about O2 infusion through plastic. Might be true, but beyond my threshold of concern. I mainly avoid the plastic pails just due to their size. I have a few, but mostly use them as rinse/sanitization vessels at this point. If I ever perfect a good cider recipe, I’ll probably break out the plastic pail and scale up to a full sized batch.

I like my ciders semi-sweet and carbed, so I bottle with a mixture of table sugar (about 1 oz per gallon) and non-fermentable sweetener. Two weeks in the bottle is enough for carbonation—any additional time helps reduce harsh off-flavors.

Good luck with your ciders!
 
Thank you everyone. I probably shouldn't have done 5 gallons as a first batch, but oh well. I think I'll rack it into some small containers and expirement with flavouring/aging and see what happens. Thank you everyone for your input!
 
Further to my 'beginner' question, how long should you age your cider? I'm finding different posts/articles/videos that recommend everything from 1 week to several months. Is it best to age in a secondary, or in bottles? Has anyone found an 'optimal' amount of time?

This is my first batch of cider (5 gallons), and I'm looking to bottle half of the batch as a still cider, and half as bottle-conditioned carbonated.
 
Aging in bottles is fine. One good thing about your beginner-ness is that you get to experience the effects of aging first hand. You might decide that young cider is yummy and it gets consumed quickly :inbottle:

My cider gets aged on oak for 3 months and I find that another 6 months makes it better. YMMV
 
Aging in bottles is fine. One good thing about your beginner-ness is that you get to experience the effects of aging first hand. You might decide that young cider is yummy and it gets consumed quickly :inbottle:

My cider gets aged on oak for 3 months and I find that another 6 months makes it better. YMMV
Oak, eh?.... LOL.... I think I may use this batch to test several styles and see what happens.
 
The big difference between cider and beer is that the yeast takes forever to drop (unless you use finings). I can have clear beer in 1 week, for cider it's more like 4 months.

If you bottle, it will still clear, but now the yeast is at the bottom of your bottle. That's the real advantage to bulk aging in a glass fermenter.
 
Made my first cider (in 12+ years of brewing) a few months back based on a recipe shared by someone who medals in ciders all over the country...was a nice simple New World Cider, did 2.5 gallon batch. So 2 gallons of Aldi apple juice and 1/2 pound of brown sugar in the fermenter, US-05 yeast...let it sit until it was at 1.000 then added sorbate and potassium metabisulfite to stop fermentation, a few days later I back sweetened to 1.010 with a 1/2 gallon of more juice and kegged. It's a tasty crisp semi-sweet cider. What is nice about this basic recipe, is it can be made over and over using many different yeasts.
 
Made my first cider (in 12+ years of brewing) a few months back based on a recipe shared by someone who medals in ciders all over the country...was a nice simple New World Cider, did 2.5 gallon batch. So 2 gallons of Aldi apple juice and 1/2 pound of brown sugar in the fermenter, US-05 yeast...let it sit until it was at 1.000 then added sorbate and potassium metabisulfite to stop fermentation, a few days later I back sweetened to 1.010 with a 1/2 gallon of more juice and kegged. It's a tasty crisp semi-sweet cider. What is nice about this basic recipe, is it can be made over and over using many different yeasts.
Tried this recipe for the first time about five weeks ago. After fermenting and carbonating, it’s ready to serve now. Wow, very good! Thanks, @jdauria! I think my FG ended up at 1.011 when I added the last 1/2 gallon of juice. Will definitely be brewing this again. The smaller batch size will let me try out some flavor additives without risking too much AJ.
 
Tried this recipe for the first time about five weeks ago. After fermenting and carbonating, it’s ready to serve now. Wow, very good! Thanks, @jdauria! I think my FG ended up at 1.011 when I added the last 1/2 gallon of juice. Will definitely be brewing this again. The smaller batch size will let me try out some flavor additives without risking too much AJ.
You're welcome, enjoy!
 

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