New to homebrew, but an old friend of large batch

[Malted-Anarchy]

Hey, all.

I've been lurking and looking around here for a little while now, and this last weekend, decided it was time to leave work with enough supplies to start making some of that Nectar at home.

Lil' background, I did small-batch production brewing for a local micro-brew here in NYS, until it shut down for a while and was re-acquired by a distributor here. Never really ventured into homebrew at that time due to making 700 gallons or more at work, and the amount of time I would put in per day. Recently took up a job for the LHBS and now I have a lot more time on my hands, figured I would start a batch of cider for this fall/winter.

Alright, now that that's all out, I'm starting off with a 3 gallon glass carboy, and a 1/4 gallon glass carboy for a little bit of experimentation. I picked up 3 gallons of Apple & Eve Apple Juice from WalMart (They don't carry cider this time of the year, it's "out of season", which I had to explain to them that it quite isn't, not for our purposes and time it takes.) and 1 pound of Great Value Brand honey.

I took my first steps, sanitization, prep and staging so everything was ready, then took to work. After about an hour, everything was looking pretty and cleaned up, and my carboys tucked into a safe place. It's been about three days now, and it's bubbling away at 67-68 degrees like there's no tomorrow. Miss the smell of fermentation.

So, equipment:
3 gallon glass carboy
1/4 gallon glass carboy
2 S-lock airlocks
2 drilled stoppers
Hydrometer
Test tube
Fermometer

Yeast Nutrient
Pectic Enzyme

Ingredients:
3 Gallons Apple & Eve Apple Juice (OG 1.050)
1 pound Great Value Honey
1 Packet Red Star Pasteur Champagne Yeast

OG was 1.061 after the honey addition.

I plan on making some still and some sparkling, and I'll pick up more equipment for that as the time comes, and then bottle into either 500ML or 1L Grolsch bottles. I'll keep you updated on how this goes.

If this goes well, next time I'll try that Caramel Apple Hard Cider that everyone seems so keen about.

 

[ncbrewer]

Good luck with the cider, and welcome to the forum.

 

[Malted-Anarchy]

Thank you much. I'll share how it turns out when the time comes.

 

[tdexterc]

Sounds good! For future reference the only technical difference between store bought apple cider and apple juice is that Apple juice has been filtered to remove any particulates. Post fermentation you won't notice much difference in flavor between using either one.

 

[Malted-Anarchy]

I was aware of that when shopping, but I was hoping for that nice rich cider coloring, instead of the golden yellow that you get with apple juice.