First timer cider maker has a few questions

[J_Thadeus_Toad]

Ok so this year I decided to try my hand at cider, I went to my local orchard and got 4 gallons of unpasteurized cider. I'm going to hear it up to 185 for 45 min to kill off any wild yeast or anything else that might be there'. I wanted to hit around 9% abv. This is where I could use some help. I was planning on adding 1lb local honey, 1 lb of white sugar & and a little under .5 lb or brown sugar. Will this get me to where I want to be? Is there anything else I should add? Raisins for tannins or something like that.

Then my plan was to primary it for 3-4 weeks depending on readings then secondary it for 3 additional weeks does that sound right. Do you need to do a secondary? Or can I age in the keg?

Thank you In advance

 

[Yooper]

Ok so this year I decided to try my hand at cider, I went to my local orchard and got 4 gallons of unpasteurized cider. I'm going to hear it up to 185 for 45 min to kill off any wild yeast or anything else that might be there'. I wanted to hit around 9% abv. This is where I could use some help. I was planning on adding 1lb local honey, 1 lb of white sugar & and a little under .5 lb or brown sugar. Will this get me to where I want to be? Is there anything else I should add? Raisins for tannins or something like that.

Then my plan was to primary it for 3-4 weeks depending on readings then secondary it for 3 additional weeks does that sound right. Do you need to do a secondary? Or can I age in the keg?

Thank you In advance

I wouldn't heat the cider. If you want to pasteurize it anyway, go with a much lower temperature. I pasteurize milk at 140 for 30 minutes, or 160 for 1 minute. I wouldn't go up to a simmer, and especially not for 45 minutes!

I'd use a campden tablet (sulfite), one per gallon, and not heat the cider at all.

I hate the taste of fermented brown sugar (molasses without sweetness), and honey once fermented has a much "smoother" taste so I'd go with the honey. My preference, though, is no added sugar at all to boost the ABV as it loses some of the "appleness" when simple sugars are added.

My favorite "recipe" for cider is: fresh pressed cider (with the campden added 24 hours before the yeast) and S04 ale yeast. That's it.

It's ready to go to secondary (or the keg) when it's clear, and the last time I did it, that took about 7 days.

You can ferment it out, and taste it to see if you'd prefer some tannin added or acid blend, or to sweeten it. I prefer a crisp dry cider, while others may want some sugar in it. You can add things like that when it's finished if you're unsure.

 

[bernardsmith]

An alternative method of increasing the sweetness of your apple juice and so the potential ABV of the fermented cider is to freeze the juice** and collect the juice as it thaws. The first third or so of the thawed juice will contain twice the amount of sugar that would be in the pressed juice (in other words, if your four gallons had a gravity of say 1.045 then the first third of juice that thaws will be closer to 1.090 and the remaining 2/3 will have hardly any sugar. Since you have concentrated the flavors and sugars from the apple juice itself this is not like adding plain sugar or brown sugar to your must. The "cost" though is that if you intended to make 4 gallons you will be able to make only about 1.3 or 1.5 gallons.... but the flavor will be magnitudes richer... Your call, of course.

**This is a bit like making ice cider, not apple jack. You are concentrating the sugars in the juice - NOT distilling alcohol because (quite simply) you freeze and thaw the juice PRIOR to pitching the yeast. Not sure what you can do with the frozen 2/3 of the near sugarless juice. I add it to my compost... but you might reduce it by boiling and make a sauce from it.