This recipe for tart cider is as simple as can be. It's very forgiving to process and timing alterations, goes down frighteningly easy, and carries with it a tartness that marries perfectly with the apple, reminiscent of cool and refreshing Granny Smith apples in the summer time.
Before we begin, I just want to get it out of the way that I am decidedly not a cider connoisseur and this recipe is just a simple tart cider that anyone can try at home for cheap with very good results. Yes you can be a scientifically ignorant chump and still make a good tart cider by following (or almost following) this so called recipe. Ultimately, it's on target for what I am looking for in a cider - tart and crisp like an apple. I don't really know what the cider aficionados would think or say about this... And don't care!
OG: 1.053 (or so, depending on the apple juice you buy)
FG: 1.002 - 1.013 (or so, yea a big range, but this will depend on your yeast selection - see below)
Tartness: Somewhere in the range of "Holy puckering Buddha butt" to "nice and sharp"
Ingredients:
5 gallons of store bought no preservatives pasteurized apple juice.
1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
Some kind of yeast (see below)
Your favorite Lactobacillus culture, I use Wyeast 5335.
1 lb brown sugar
Day 1:
Crack open 4 gallons of the cider or juice and add it to your cleaned and sanitized carboy
Add 1 tsp of yeast nutrient
Shake to aerate, pitch your yeast.
Put on your airlock, set aside in a reasonable ale temperature, and ignore for a while.
Regarding yeast selection, I've used Danstar champagne yeast, wine yeast, Wyeast 3711 French Saison, and Safale US-05. All very good. Next time I plan to try Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale. So far my favorite has been 3711, it leaves the cider very dry but without the harshness I felt came with the champagne and wine yeasts, and seems to match well with the level of sourness I like. US-05 was similar to 3711, just a bit less dry. I'd love to hear anyone's experience in trying these or other yeasts.
After a couple of months:
Boil up a pound of brown sugar with a pint or so of water (just enough to dissolve when heated), and add to your fermentor. This will keep the yeast interested and active, bring up the gravity a little, and round out the cider. I've not had a problem adding it through a funnel when it was still very hot.
One thing I've been meaning to try at this stage but have not in any batches yet is steeping a small amount (maybe 1 lb) of crystal malt and adding the liquid from that rather than the brown sugar, which should result in a sweeter, more caramelly finished product.
About a month later:
Crack the fifth gallon of juice, pitch your lacto, put an airlock on (even though lacto doesn't produce nearly the same level of CO2 as yeast) set it aside at room temp for one month. Make sure your juice container has enough room for the lacto before pitching, of course!
After your lacto gallon batch is sufficiently sour, combine it with your primary carboy.
Let it sit a week, and bottle to 3 volumes or rack to a lacto dedicated keg and carb up to 20 PSI.
Enjoy
Customize your own!
If you couldn't tell by now there's a lot of room for variability in this process.
If you want more tartness, reserve more of the apple juice for the lacto addition, and/or let the lacto portion age longer prior to combining. You can let your lacto portion go anywhere between a few days and a month depending on how much sour you want. Longer means more sour of course, up to a point. A month might be way past the maximum lactic acid you can get out of a single gallon - I'll let the science work itself out by the scientists. If you choose to want even more sour, reserve a second gallon initially and only use 3 gallons with the yeast on day one. Try your best guess initially and adjust in future batches - you'll find your own personal preference for tartness level as time goes on. I specifically have found 1 gallon for a week or two works well for me.
If you want more dryness, try Saison yeast. If you want more sweetness, use US-05 or Scottish Ale (presumably, I haven't tried Scottish Ale yeast yet but it's reasonable to believe it would leave more residuals sugar based on ale attenuation numbers.
If you are kegging and like a little sweetness along with the sour, you can easily just rack to your keg when you first combine the sour and yeast portions rather than let the sugars in the sour portion get fermented out. Can't do this with bottles though or you'll probably get some bombs!
You can also shorten the "wait times" in nearly any step, I've just found in most ciders that a minimum of 6 months is best for the mature apple flavors to come through.
Before we begin, I just want to get it out of the way that I am decidedly not a cider connoisseur and this recipe is just a simple tart cider that anyone can try at home for cheap with very good results. Yes you can be a scientifically ignorant chump and still make a good tart cider by following (or almost following) this so called recipe. Ultimately, it's on target for what I am looking for in a cider - tart and crisp like an apple. I don't really know what the cider aficionados would think or say about this... And don't care!
OG: 1.053 (or so, depending on the apple juice you buy)
FG: 1.002 - 1.013 (or so, yea a big range, but this will depend on your yeast selection - see below)
Tartness: Somewhere in the range of "Holy puckering Buddha butt" to "nice and sharp"
Ingredients:
5 gallons of store bought no preservatives pasteurized apple juice.
1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
Some kind of yeast (see below)
Your favorite Lactobacillus culture, I use Wyeast 5335.
1 lb brown sugar
Day 1:
Crack open 4 gallons of the cider or juice and add it to your cleaned and sanitized carboy
Add 1 tsp of yeast nutrient
Shake to aerate, pitch your yeast.
Put on your airlock, set aside in a reasonable ale temperature, and ignore for a while.
Regarding yeast selection, I've used Danstar champagne yeast, wine yeast, Wyeast 3711 French Saison, and Safale US-05. All very good. Next time I plan to try Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale. So far my favorite has been 3711, it leaves the cider very dry but without the harshness I felt came with the champagne and wine yeasts, and seems to match well with the level of sourness I like. US-05 was similar to 3711, just a bit less dry. I'd love to hear anyone's experience in trying these or other yeasts.
After a couple of months:
Boil up a pound of brown sugar with a pint or so of water (just enough to dissolve when heated), and add to your fermentor. This will keep the yeast interested and active, bring up the gravity a little, and round out the cider. I've not had a problem adding it through a funnel when it was still very hot.
One thing I've been meaning to try at this stage but have not in any batches yet is steeping a small amount (maybe 1 lb) of crystal malt and adding the liquid from that rather than the brown sugar, which should result in a sweeter, more caramelly finished product.
About a month later:
Crack the fifth gallon of juice, pitch your lacto, put an airlock on (even though lacto doesn't produce nearly the same level of CO2 as yeast) set it aside at room temp for one month. Make sure your juice container has enough room for the lacto before pitching, of course!
After your lacto gallon batch is sufficiently sour, combine it with your primary carboy.
Let it sit a week, and bottle to 3 volumes or rack to a lacto dedicated keg and carb up to 20 PSI.
Enjoy
Customize your own!
If you couldn't tell by now there's a lot of room for variability in this process.
If you want more tartness, reserve more of the apple juice for the lacto addition, and/or let the lacto portion age longer prior to combining. You can let your lacto portion go anywhere between a few days and a month depending on how much sour you want. Longer means more sour of course, up to a point. A month might be way past the maximum lactic acid you can get out of a single gallon - I'll let the science work itself out by the scientists. If you choose to want even more sour, reserve a second gallon initially and only use 3 gallons with the yeast on day one. Try your best guess initially and adjust in future batches - you'll find your own personal preference for tartness level as time goes on. I specifically have found 1 gallon for a week or two works well for me.
If you want more dryness, try Saison yeast. If you want more sweetness, use US-05 or Scottish Ale (presumably, I haven't tried Scottish Ale yeast yet but it's reasonable to believe it would leave more residuals sugar based on ale attenuation numbers.
If you are kegging and like a little sweetness along with the sour, you can easily just rack to your keg when you first combine the sour and yeast portions rather than let the sugars in the sour portion get fermented out. Can't do this with bottles though or you'll probably get some bombs!
You can also shorten the "wait times" in nearly any step, I've just found in most ciders that a minimum of 6 months is best for the mature apple flavors to come through.
