Basic cider recipe?

[p38a]

So the basic life cycle to the basic cider recipe is this?

1. Open fermenter
2. add juice
3. pitch yeast
4. wait a long time
5. while you wait
   • sugars in juice ferment
   • alcohol is made
   • fermentation continues until there are no sugars left
6. cider has reached max abv and can be bottled

Items to note

• bottled as such it will not be carbonated
• bottled as such it will most likely be very dry and pretty high in abv
• it can be kegged for carbonation
• you can add fermentable sugars prior to bottling to carbonate
• you can sweeten it with unfermentable sugars or,
• you can stabilize the brew, aka kill the yeast, to add fermentables to sweeten the brew but
• if you do this it can only be carbonated in a keg

"is this more or less correct?" lamented the newber brewer

 

[pfranco81]

that's how it sounds. I'm still confused on using concentrate, is that for a higher ABV since there would be more sugar/volume? Is unfermentable sugar added pre/post/primary/conditioning?

 

[Yooper]

Right, but not high ABV. Depending on the amount of natural sugar in juice, hard cider may be 5-7% alcohol. Higher than beer, but not "high alcohol". Of course if you add some more fementables (juice concentrate or sugar), you'll boost the ABV but it will take longer to ferment and to age. Wine has much more ABV, but takes forever to age and mellow.

I don't understand the question about the concentrate, sorry.

 

[pfranco81]

I was asking what the purpose of concentrate was, but you answered it.

At what stage in the process is the unfermentable sugars added? What would be a typical dose for a 5 gallon batch?

 

[NurseNan]

Concentrate increases fermentable sugars without diluting the apple flavor. If you want to use unfermentable sugars to sweeten a cider, add them when fermentation is complete, and add them to taste.

 

[p38a]

how does one identify what is and is not fermentable?