Did the orchard lie to me?

[WVMJ]

Are there any cidermills around your area the make their own hard cider, some of these will sell their unfermented cider for you to drink or take home and ferment. If the juice wasnt that impressive to begin with I agree, who cares what was in it or if anything was in it, find something higher quality anyway. WVMJ

 

[jsiddall]

Are there any cidermills around your area the make their own hard cider, some of these will sell their unfermented cider for you to drink or take home and ferment. If the juice wasnt that impressive to begin with I agree, who cares what was in it or if anything was in it, find something higher quality anyway. WVMJ

I have not found any local cider mills but I should spend some more time looking. Almost everything I have found are sweet apples. The staples here are Lobos and Macs. There are a handful of other varieties available depending on where you go, but none are traditional cider apples.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Very few of us have access to real cider apples/juice. We make cider from the regular apple juice. You could have a look around & ask some friends if they know of anybody who has a crab apple tree, maybe check craigslist. Crabapples are AWESOME in a cider. You can also make a pure crab apple cider/wine if you like. Often people don't use the fruit & will be happy to let you pick it so there will be less rotting on the ground.
Regards, GF.

 

[jsiddall]

Update: this cider did ferment out once I added the starter. Ended at 1.000. Primed and bottled a few to see if they would bottle carbonate.

In the meantime I started another batch made from store bought fresh cider with no preservatives. Pitched rehydrated S-04 from the same LHBS as this batch and it started fermenting right away.