Complete Newb

[pistolpete]

Title kind of say's it all. I have been reading and researching hard cider brewing for a while now, and just havent got the chance to dive right into it. Found the forums here and started reading threads and such to try to find out as much as I can before I try to attempt myself.

Hoping to get the basics down hopefully with some help from the people here. My first stumbling block has been finding equipment and trying to get a concensus of what equipment is needed. I have talked to 5-6 homebrew shops within an hour or two of my home, and seems I have literally gotten 5-6 different answers on what I need to start, and what would be useful to start. So if anyone has the time and can give me a quick run down I would really appreciate it. Also interested in possibly some quick recipes to get my feet wet and not have to wait half a year to see if I am headed in the right direction.

Sorry for the long windedness, hopefully someone will wade through that and help me out. Thanks in advance for anyone to take the time for me. Look forward to learning as much as I can and hopefully have something worth while to contribute to the forums.

Thanks again,
Pete

 

[Nateo]

Really, all you need is juice, and yeast.

I recommend making a plain cider, with just juice, and no additional sugar. That will ferment the quickest/easiest, and also taste good the soonest.

I bought some 1 gallon jugs of pasteurized, no preservative added apple juice, bought some airlocks and stoppers for the jugs, and just dropped the dry yeast directly into the jug. I used Cote Des Blanc and Montrachet. The Cote batch turned out better, IMO.

No sanitizer necessary, until it came time to bottle. I waited 6 weeks then bottled.

Store-bought sanitizers are nice, but you can make your own using bleach-water-vinegar:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/blogs/...-bleach-water-vinegar-no-rinse-sanitizer.html

I have a bucket with a spigot on it for bottling, which is really handy. There are different calculators you can use to figure out how much sugar to use when carbonating, this is the one I use:
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

 

[pistolpete]

Thanks for the quick response. Just after reading a few more threads in the meantime have another quick question. I have access to fresh pressed unpasteurized cider, would this be a better option to start with then say a pasteurized juice/cider. The local source actually supplies both pasteurized and unpastteurized. Just have to go on a Monday to get the unpasteurized.

Thanks yet again,

 

[Nateo]

If you start with pasteurized juice, you know that you only have yeast in there. I would recommend this as the easiest way to start.

Unpasteurized cider will probably ferment on its own, because there will be yeast on the apples when they press them. There will also probably be other bacteria on the apples as well. There are ways to kill the bad bacteria, like they do in wine making, but it will add more steps and complexity. I wouldn't recommend making your first batch harder than it needs to be.

 

[pistolpete]

Thanks again, looks as though I am picking up a couple jugs of cider this Saturday at the farmers market and giving this a go. Thanks,