My experiment with apple juice - opinions wanted.

[lilzaphod]

So about 6 months ago, I decided to do an test batch with some apple juice.

I bought about 2 gallons of cold organic apple juice, added some spices, boiled it, and then threw it in 3 gallon carboy with some champagne yeast and set it in my brew room.

I pulled the plug on it tonight, (no secondary, kept on the yeast) and siphoned into a corny keg and threw it into my kegerator under 20ish PSI and going to let it sit.

I poured a bit into a glass as I was transferring and it was very..... strange.

Kind of sour, very alcoholic, and just odd. It almost tasted like a wine, but not really.

Do you think this has a shot at being drinkable when it cools down and gets some carb? Or was this a ~$40 lesson in ruining good ingredients.

I was going for a hard cider (sans research), and I missed. Not sure if I missed in a "WOW!" way, or in the "VX Nerve Gas" mistake kind of way.

Thanks

 

[ModlrMike]

I've only done one cider, but my research showed that you have to "back sweeten" cider in order to make it drinkable. What I did was to kill the yeasties with some campden tablet, and then add sucrose. You could use apple juice concentrate, or even the grape juice sweetener available at wine making shops. One of the challenges making cider is that you need to use a variety of juice sources in order to balance the brew. I used concentrate, and then a bottle of juice from a specific apple species (Cox orange pippin). It turned out quite nice, but I still had to sweeten the cider once fermentation stopped.

 

[Sager Brewing Co.]

Don't use champagne yeast unless you want it to taste like wine/champagne. Use a sweet mead yeast or a Cider yeast.

 

[springer]

it would taste wine because that is really what you made. read this thread
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/man-i-love-apfelwein-14860/

I have made this and it great.

 

[MrNate]

Let it condition for another 6 months or so.

 

[Bobby_M]

Well, boiling it was a mistake. You drove off whatever delicate apple aroma it ever had. In any case, it's probably decent but dry cider is an aquired taste. Try to force a few pints down before you give up on it.

 

[Homercidal]

+1 on the boiling. I did that first I tried to make hard cider. Turned out crappy.

 

[MrNate]

Ooh, yeah... missed that. Don't boil your cider.

 

[Edcculus]

I let all of my apfelwien bulk age for at least 3 months. I've let it go even longer. The more you age, the better this stuff tastes.


As an aside, I just realized that I meant to link to the apfelwien page here, but I accidently did it in the thread where the guy was asking about apple beer....oops.