My first cider- any help is greatly appreciated!

[Ludesbrews]

Hi all,

I just got into Home brewing thanks to my birthday gift from my wife. As I do with most things, I have read up on the process of brewing as well as making hard cider. I plan on brewing my first five gallon batch from a kit this weekend, but I’d like to start a small cider tomorrow.

I bought a one gallon carboy full of 100% Apple juice from Whole Foods, as I read great things about this juice.

I plan to:

-remove some of the juice from the carboy
-pitch the yeast (whatever yeast I get)
- airlock it
-monitor it
-move to second fermentation after two weeks
-bottle after another two weeks

A few questions I have;

1) What yeast is best? I have read 100000 different things.

2) I would like to sweeten this back up after the natural sugars are fermented. What is the best way to do this? I have read a number of options including using an artificial sweetener before bottling.

3) Is there something I can add after second fermentation to stop the yeast from working so bottles wont burst if I add frozen concentrate?

Any other tips are greatly appreciated !!!,

Cheers,
Ludes

 

[V-Fib]

Well if you plan on back sweetening it you have to kill the yeast with potassium sorbate. But then there's no yeast to carb the bottles. So you can have a still cider that you're able to add sugar or concentrate back to or use an artificial sweetener. I'm not sure if lactose would be an option to sweeten it back up.

As far as yeast, with a cider its pretty wide open. People use cider, champagne, wine and ale yeast. Others will chime in what the benefits are of each are I'm sure. I've made one cider with champagne at it produces a really dry cider that is more like white wine to me. My second batch is going right now that I used US-05 in that I steeped some grain with and added a little hops to. So we'll see

 

[Maylar]

It seems you've done some reading and already have a good idea of how to proceed.

1) Take your pick. There's no "best" yeast. What temperature range can you ferment at? This would help narrow your choices.
2) Depends on whether you also want carbonation.
3) Potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite. But again, it depends on if you want carbonation or not. If you can keg, there's another set of possibilities.

 

[JimRausch]

It seems you've done some reading and already have a good idea of how to proceed.

1) Take your pick. There's no "best" yeast. What temperature range can you ferment at? This would help narrow your choices.
2) Depends on whether you also want carbonation.
3) Potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite. But again, it depends on if you want carbonation or not. If you can keg, there's another set of possibilities.

I agree with Dave, but want to add another option for #3- pasteurization after you reach the carbonation level you wish.