Graham's English Cider

[kmarkstevens]

Just discovered this thread, and slowly working my way through it. Good stuff and thanks to everyone that has posted

 

[ForReal]

Cider newb here and here's my story, needed a batch of cider for my daughters graduation in May so that gives be about two months and I've done this already

Five gallon carboy
4.75 gallons of organic Apple Juice SG of 1.045
1 1/2 lbs organic cane sugar dissolved in heated cider and mixed
1 lb of honey dissolved in heated cider
4 tsp of nutrients
OG of about 1.063
1 packet of Nottingham pitched on 2/6 at 66F and fermentation started that day and the airlock was a machine gun, the aroma was better than expected
Sunday the 13th the airlock activity was next to nothing so I took a reading of 0.999 and I've parked it in a fridge to crash it at 36F
Sampling tastes pretty good but I've never drank hard cider so I've no clue if this is going to be any good for a cider drinker that like the Stella brand.
I'm going to bottle in about a week and would rather not pasteurize if I don't have to but will if needed.
Originally I was going to use about 4oz of corn sugar for priming but after reading this thread I'm considering using a can of concentrate for additional apple flavor but I don't want it to get to sweet
I'm probably going to pasteurize as it'll not be kept chilled.

Thoughts or ideas?

Thanks

Hi,

while in the secondary, do you control the temperature?

thanks for the recipe btw.

 

[fluketamer]

i know im late to this party but this recipe is kicking.

i needed a cider recipe and i think i saw this as a sticky. i wanted something less dry than apfelwein and put it on 4 weeks ago. 2 gallons motts juice of half a lime 2 decaf teabags in a cup of water. tsp yeast nutrient and s05
kegged and cold its really smooth. reminds me a lot of austin eastciders
its beyond drinkable and perfectly dry. a half a cap of grenadine and the missus loves it.

this will be a regular in the lineup.

 

[Raptor99]

I just stumbled across this thread. I have not considered adding lime juice to my hard cider. For those of you who have tried this (more recently than the OP!), how did it turn out? Besides adding some acidity, how would you describe the flavor profile from adding some lime?

 

[fluketamer]

the lemon or lime is not for flavor its for the acid which really helps. since the juice lacks acid that you would normally get from pressed cider apples. just like the tea adds tannin . you dont taste the tea either.,


however since i started adding lime juice instead of lemons i feel it works better. it adds a little je ne sais quois. i think the limes are less acidic than the lemons and the cider doesn't need that much acid. in that vein key limes may work even better.

 

[Rish]

Bottled a 5 gallon batch today. First time doing this recipe with tea and lime added to the bottling bucket. I used EC-1118 yeast. Got some sulphur so should have used some nutrient but turned out good after 4 weeks in fv. Very well balanced and tasty at this point. I really like it. We'll see how it is when it's carbed.

 

[fluketamer]

Bottled a 5 gallon batch today. First time doing this recipe with tea and lime added to the bottling bucket. I used EC-1118 yeast. Got some sulphur so should have used some nutrient but turned out good after 4 weeks in fv. Very well balanced and tasty at this point. I really like it. We'll see how it is when it's carbed.

hi rish,
its my favorite cider as is or with added fruit juice.
are you kegging or bottling and any backsweetening.
what juice did you use?

 

[Rish]

Hey, fluketamer. I bottle. I liked it as is so didn't backsweeten. Used Nature's Nectar brand from Aldi. Probably the best tasting cider I've done going into the bottle. If it continues to improve as it ages I'll definitely be making it again, likely even if it doesn't.

 

[bearpaw8491]

Totally new to ciders and really confused after reading thru the entire thread. Here’s my question:
If my my final gravity is 1.000 or less AND I add the appropriate amount of priming sugar per available calculators, do I need to pasteurized at any point or will be bottles be good (no bottle bombs) until consumed regardless of time without further actions?





Thanks in advance

 

[bernardsmith]

Totally new to ciders and really confused after reading thru the entire thread. Here’s my question:
If my my final gravity is 1.000 or less AND I add the appropriate amount of priming sugar per available calculators, do I need to pasteurized at any point or will be bottles be good (no bottle bombs) until consumed regardless of time without further actions?





Thanks in advance

In order to "prime" any wine , including cider or mead - or even beer, you MUST have some viable yeast in solution. If you stabilize chemically or choose to pasteurize, you will kill the yeast. Adding sugar after killing the yeast (or more simply, inhibiting the ability of the yeast to ferment any added sugar) will fail to carbonate your cider. So, bottom line, you must choose to either stabilize your cider or carbonate it.. You really cannot do both unless you keg the cider and force carbonate by adding CO2 under pressure.

 

[bearpaw8491]

Thanks Bernard. Long time winemaker here and am familiar with stabilizing wine (believe you and I discussed an elderberry wine some time back). As SOP, I use sorbate and KMeta when backsweetening a wine.
The recipe confused me by adding priming sugar for the bottle carbonization of the cider. It seemed to be roughly the equivalent of adding sugar to backsweeten a wine but w/o inhibiting the yeast.
So if I'm reading correctly, I can add the amount of priming sugar suggested by Brewer's Friend Priming Sugar Calculator https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/ , cap, allow time for carbonization (is this the same as "bottle conditioning"?) and then enjoy over an extended time w/o fear of bottle bombs and no pasteurization will be required - correct? If so, sounds like the priming sugar is self-limiting.
Thanks once again for your insight.
Bearpaw

​

 

[beren]

The amount of sugar is the limiting factor. The yeast can’t eat what’s not there, and we know how much co2 is produced from a given amount of sugar.

 

[bearpaw8491]

Thanks beren, just like champaign so no worries about exploding bottles as long as I stick with prescribed amounts.

 

[bernardsmith]

Prescribed amounts which ought to be about 22-30 g of sugar per gallon, depending on how much sparkle you want. The most important thing, is that you must use bottles designed to withstand the pressure of the gas that will build up. Champagne bottles are excellent, as are beer bottles or grolsch-type bottles. Regular wine bottles are not made to deal with the amount of pressure the CO2 trapped in the bottle can produce.
The other thing I would caution, is that a cider or wine at 1.000 STILL has unfermented sugars. True, pure water has a gravity of 1.000 but a wine is a solution of ethanol and water and although the amount of ethanol might be 5 or 6% in a cider, the final gravity should be less than 1.000 as ethanol is less dense than water. Which is to say that you might find that in the bottle, not only will the added sugar be fermented , but over time, the unfermented sugars may become the food of the yeast. I never ever recommend pasteurization but you MAY want to consider pasteurizing and when the cider has cooled, you add a pinch of yeast with the priming sugar. That in fact was the original reason for culturing EC 1118 and other "champagne" yeasts - so that there would be no fear that the yeast used in primary would no longer be viable after a lengthy aging and so each bottle would be guaranteed to be primed when fermentables were added

 

[DaveDiamond]

Ever since my last trip to the UK, I have fallen in love with a good dry English cider. It has become my goal ever sense to re-create a English-style cider using store-bought materials. After adding different forms of tannin and acid, using all sorts of ale yeasts to ferment the juice, and I think I have come up with a great recipe that pretty much anyone can do, getting a quaffable re-creation of a cider one could get across the pond. Finishes dry to off-dry, around 1.002, 6.4% abv. Taste is most comparable to the Samual Smith Organic Cider you can get here in the states.

Graham's English Cider
5 gallons Treetop (or equivalent) Apple Juice
4 black teabags (English or Irish Breakfast)
3 key limes (or one regular lime)
1 pack s-04 yeast
(yeast nutrients as needed)

Directions
Add juice of lime(s) to 3 cups of water, bring to a boil then turn off heat. Steep teabags for 7-10 mins, cool for a few mins then add to carboy. Add nutrients and juice into carboy with an aggressive pour to help aerate the juice. Add yeast, put an airlock on then place in a cool (60F-70F) environment.

Primary for one month, then rack to secondary, topping off with juice. Leave in secondary until crystal clear (usually 2-3 months or so from pitching) then bottle with 4oz priming sugar.

Takes about a month to carbonate, tastes good after 3 months, but just gets better with age. I usually start opening bottles about 5 months after pitching.

Here's a glass after a good amount of aging, so you can see how clear it gets

Just as a note, I've gotten into the habit of just starting a batch of this cider every time I brew using a bit of the same yeast as the beer, and have had great success with WLP005, WLP023, WLP026, WLP028, WLP037, WLP775 and nottingham, however these all seem to take longer to age and clear compared to the s-04, but are all slightly different in flavor profile, I'm sure any other english yeast would work great in this as well.

Cheers!

I made this one up last week with a bit of a twist. I found an ice tea with lemon and lime juice, so I used a bottle of that rather than tea and lime juice, plus added a bit of apple puree to the juice, which was 6 litres of cloudy fresh 'Nudie' juice and almost 5 litres of 'clear' long life juice. Also added half a cinnamon stick (which I think I'll take out), a pinch of nutmeg, a cup of raw sugar and a dash of vanilla essence to lean it towards an Apple Pie recipe I found. Might be blummin' horrible, might be great, time will tell!

 

[DaveDiamond]

I made this one up last week with a bit of a twist. I found an ice tea with lemon and lime juice, so I used a bottle of that rather than tea and lime juice, plus added a bit of apple puree to the juice, which was 6 litres of cloudy fresh 'Nudie' juice and almost 5 litres of 'clear' long life juice. Also added half a cinnamon stick (which I think I'll take out), a pinch of nutmeg, a cup of raw sugar and a dash of vanilla essence to lean it towards an Apple Pie recipe I found. Might be blummin' horrible, might be great, time will tell!

Just opened the lid to take a reading, it smells delicious, like stewed apples that caramelised! I don't see a lot of action though. It has been exactly 1 week and it's gone from 1.068 to 1.027,so 5.38% atm which would be fine really. I'll take another reading in a few days and see if it's stalled. @Rish

 

[DaveDiamond]

Took another reading, went straight past apple pie and into apple liquor territory, 0.998, 9.19%. alcohol flavour dominates first, but it's quite smooth and coats your mouth nicely, the aftertaste is very good, not like a dry cider at all, no raspiness, no dry mouth. Drinkable, but a bit too strong to knock back 10 of like I would a bought cider. Not bad for my first taste of home brewed cider at all! I've finished off the test mug, even flat I want another glass!

 

[DaveDiamond]

Guess who's enjoying a nice fizzy bottle of cider thanks to this recipe and Sodastream? ($10 and still had gas!)