First Cider

[archthered]

I've been telling my wife I'd try to make her some cider for some time now. We were going to our local orchard and I suggested I get some cider to use for hard cider. Long story short now we (and when I say we I mean me) are making cider for our family for Christmas. I've made a fair bit of beer and a little bit of mead but this is my first time taking on cider.

The goal is to have three different ciders, one a classic dry cider, one sweet cider, and one a little sweeter with cherry. I was thinking of adding a little bit of spice to all of them but with more in the sweet ciders. I was planning on putting 5 gallons of cider in one carboy but I need two more gallons, I was thinking of putting the two gallons in a 5 gallon bucket but I'm not sure how the extra head space will effect cider, alternatively I could do two single gallon batches in gallon containers if the head space is an issue.

The five gallon batch will be split between the dry and sweet cider while the remaining two gallons is for the sweet cider with cherry. I had planned on adding a a small amount (I'm still trying to figure exactly how much) of cinnamon, clove, and possibly allspice to the fermentation by heating a small amount of cider with the spices and pouring it in to the fermenter. When fermentation is complete half will be primed with a small amount of apple juice concentrate (this will be measured but I haven't done the math yet) and bottled, that will be the dry cider. The other half will also be primed with concentrate but a bit more will be used and it will be heated with a small amount of the spices before being added and then this half will be pasteurized leaving some residual sugar and leaving it a little sweeter but after enough CO2 has been created to carbonate the cider. The remaining two gallons will be primed with cherry juice/concentrate/syrup to add cherry flavor and will also be heated with a bit more spice and again pasteurized leaving some residual sugar etc.

This is my first cider and I was just looking for comments and thoughts from those with more experience about what I may be doing wrong with this. I plan on adding pectic enzyme and using one packet of safcider for the whole thing.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Super complicated first batch? Good luck!


See how this works for you:
-If the juice is unpasteurized, consider adding sulfite as an anti-microbial.
-Add pectic enzyme and yeast.
-Let your cider ferment dry. Keep fermentation cool. Consider using nutrient (I recommend it if you want to drink it young).
-Consider adding sulfite as an anti-oxidant.
-Consider adjusting acidity with malic acid.
-Consider adding tannin.
-Consider fining agents or additional aging to clear.
-Get your spices and flavorings together.
-Do your measurements and calculations for priming.
-Make hot tea, cold steep, or alcoholic extract of your spices. Experiment.
-Conduct bench trials to determine the amount you need of each (sweetness and spice) to hit the flavor you want. Remember they will mellow a little bit with some age.

Bottling day:
-Rack to bottling bucket.
-Consider bottling yeast.
-Add priming sugar and spice for the dry batch & bottle as much of that as you want.
-Add more apple concentrate and spice and bottle as much of the sweet cider you intend to pasteurize.
-Add the cherry and bottle the remaining.

 

[MarkKF]

This is just my $0.02 and I’m far from an expert. First time I’d make several one gal. batches or one 5 gal. batch and just split it up at bottling time.

 

[Justwingnit]

I'm no expert either, but I just mixed up my 12th batch of Cider/Wine/Lemonade what I have found is I'm nolonger playing in my fermenter, I'm concentrating on making a DAM good dry / still cider and changing it up when it is racked to secondary or even later.

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

second what "Justwingit" said. Focus on a simple primary, then play around with the secondary. Keeps it simple and easier to control.
Or that is my 2 cent's worth

 

[archthered]

At this point I think I have what I need to get started. Thanks for all the advice. At some point I will comment with my procedure and how it all turned out. It's kind of crazy to have my first batch be something complicated, with a timeline, and to give to others, but SWMBO says that's how it is going to be so here goes nothing!

 

[Justwingnit]

Good luck and YES PLEASE keep us posted, nothing is more annoying than an OP never following up on a post. Even if months later a simple LOL "Dont ask and I won't tell" or a "I never even tried it" but best of all would be, " I ended up using this... recipe, and this directions, and it tastes great"

 

[archthered]

Follow up- As mentioned above the goal is to split this into three batches, one dry, one sweet and spiced, one cherry sweet spiced. I used 7 gallons of store bought cider, og 1056. I treated it with 3.5 tsp of pectic enzyme and heated one gal with 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp Chinese 5 spice, and 11 whole cloves. This was then added back to the rest, and O2 was added, then I pitched safcider and sealed with my fermentation chamber set at 60, raised temp to 62 after a week and eventually 64. Hit 0.998 fg after about 2 weeks and let it sit for an additional 2 weeks cold crashing for the final week. I did NOT add malic acid since it tasted tart nor tannin since I was worried my intended audience wouldn't like it as much, though I think if I were do it again I would have added a bit of tannin, I think it would have added a bit.

I used apple juice concentrate to backsweeten and prime for bottle conditioning all of the batches since even the dry needed to be a bit more sweet than it finished. I put all the cider in the same bucket for bottling and then made my additions for each starting with the dry, then the sweet, followed by the cherry sweet. I will spare you the math and details since you will have to do your own math based on the details of what brand you find but I did all the math and the dry should have been about 1.005 once out of the bottle and had nothing added other than the apple juice added at bottling. After bottling 2 gal of the dry I added 1/8th tsp of each cinnamon, clove, and allspice as well as an additional apple juice to take gravity to around 1.015 after carbonation. After bottling 2 gal of sweet I added an additional 3/4 tsp of clove and 1/4 tsp of all spice as well as enough cherry juice to take the gravity to about 1.020. I let sit to carbonate and bottle pasteurized, details below.

All in all it went well and tasted good. All three came out quite clear which was amazing considering the lack of gelatin and not particularly long amount of time it sat. The dry cider came out crisp and tart with a definitive apple flavor and just a touch of flavor from the spice but almost so light it couldn't really be identified, you could taste something but if you didn't know what was added you'd have a hell of a time figuring it out, the dry would have benefited the most from some tannin. The sweet cider was intended to be reminiscent of mulled cider and hit the mark pretty well, it was sweet with a touch tart and a definitive apple flavor. SWMBO said she would have liked a touch more spice I would have like a tad less but it was really good as was though I do think a bit of tannin would have added. The cherry was not quite as good. SWMBO wanted a strong and definitive clove flavor to it, she loves cloves and cherries, but we both agree that I used too much on this batch. It wasn't unpleasant but it was hard to taste much around the clove, though you could still detect the cherry flavor the apple was mostly lost, not completely but mostly. I think tannin could have been added but it really didn't need it as much as the others and given that this was supposed to be an even more spiced/mulled cider than the others it may not have added much even if the spicing had been back off.

As I said I bottle pasteurized and I will go in to that now. I watched, and rewatched, a video on this process thinking I could replicate their results without much trouble, it looked so easy on the video, famous last words! At bottling time I filled a used pop bottle with cider and tightened the lid down as much as possible, the video said when the bottle feels as stiff as it did before opening it with the pop that it was time to pasteurize. Pop bottles are quite stiff and this is where the trouble began, it felt pretty stiff pretty quick, about 3 days, but was not as stiff as when new so I waited a couple more days but it did not get much stiffer. I used an old pot from my extract days or brewing that had a bottom for steaming (or was it canning?) and when I went to pasteurize the bottles I had one explode shooting a large chunk of glass 10 feet across my kitchen. Long story short I let it sit too long carbonating so when the temperature went up the pressure went up partially because gas is less soluble in warmer liquid and partially because the gas law says that as temp increases so does pressure. I ended up having to degas everything, it's a good thing I used flip top bottles, and still ended up losing a fair number of bottles figuring out went went wrong, though I had enough for the Xmas gifts we needed and still some for us. In the future I will not wait as long to pasteurize and error on the side of caution, glass bottles blowing up next to you is not fun!