Questions on making my first ciders

[IyanMan]

I harvested and pressed my own apples and pears and plan to make hard ciders from both.
The fruit has yielded the following amounts and SG.
Apple Juice
3.5 gal @ 1.053 SG
Pear Juice
2.5gal @ 1.048 SG
Here are my questions...
Do I need to pasteurize my juice?
How much yeast per gallon is recommended?
Does it matter what starting gravity is (I've seen people recommend 1.06-1.065)?
Do I need to add nutrient as is i was making a beer or mead?

 

[fluketamer]

hi welcome

what kind of pears and apples? whats the pH of the juce?
if you dont pasteurize you will bring in other yeasts. that could yiled funky results.
what yeast are you using.
the starting gravity will give you a general idea of how much alcohol you will end up with.
if using store bought yeast i would add nutrient.

 

[IyanMan]

Apple juice is a blend of what I think are red delicious and granny smith and I'm not sure about the pears. Theses trees were already planted on my property when I moved in, so until I get a professionals opinion, it's a guess.
I have not tested the pH of the juice. Does that make a difference?
The yeast I will be using is SafCider AS-2.
Going back to SG... I've seen in other forums that people will add sugar to get the SG to 1.06. Frankly, I don't want to do that, but I wanted to be sure that it didn't really matter.

 

[fluketamer]

the granny smith should add a nice tartness.

i have never had good luck fermenting non-perry pear juice . defiantley add pectinase to the pears they have a lot of pectin in them.

you need a fairly low pH to get a nice cider. around 3.5 . i would add lemon, or lime juice to lower it or acid blend or malic. if needed


https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/cider-ph.256616/

i would add nutrients to that yeast .

also consider an ale yeast like so5 . i like how it tends to eaves a little sweetness.

the SG doesnt really matter you will get cider whether or not you check the SG or raise it.

but as a general rule if you

start with 1.040 ferment to 1.000 will give you about 5.2 % abv

1.043 (store bought juice) gives about 5.6 %
1.050 gives 6.5

adding extra sugars ,

1.060 gives 7.8 ( imperial range cider)
1.070 gives 9 % wine territory

i find with time almost all ciders will be good if you keep them simple.

.

and remember to back sweeten at least a little even for dry ciders. it brings out the flavor.

to make sweet cider 2 cups of sugar to 5 gallons.
semi sweet 1 cup

dry 1/4 cup


good luck

 

[IyanMan]

Okay, one more question...
Should I pasteurize my juice before fermentation or after or both?

 

[fluketamer]

i like to know whats in my fermentations so i would pasteurize. this way you can repeat what you have done if its good. but others may disagree. some swear by just letting juice sit and naturally ferment. i am sure this will work but may be less reliable.

i think k meta can be used to kill the wild yeasts.

 

[j4babcock]

Agree with fluketamer if you want to know what you're gonna get and repeat that or don't want to risk a wild ferment overcoming (and potentially spoiling) your yeast then pasteurize or similar. Having said that some of the best ciders I've had are wild ferments

 

[IyanMan]

That answers my question as to if I pasteurize before fermentation.
But what about after fermentation?

 

[j4babcock]

No after fermentation you've got alcohol so no need. You can stabilize with campden tablets or something but I usually leave them as live ferments to bottle age and become more complex over time. Be sure to sanitize your equipment and bottle and you'll be fine.

 

[fluketamer]

so yeah after fermentation, you will have a very dry cider around .9999 or so. it will still be alive tho. so if you try to sweeten it with anything other than nonfermentable sugars it will restart and get stronger . unless kept very very cold.

if you dont want this and want still cider you can kill the yeast with k meta. or heat. i have also found that letting it sit a long long time then racking of the yeast will leave behind enough yeast to not start up again if left warm.

i have found the best way to make not dry carbed ciders is by kegging them and keeping them cold. i havent found a good reliabel way to make them in thebottle and pasteurize and still have good carbonation.
some use sorbitol etc but i dont like the taste of fake sugars.,

 

[Chalkyt]

FYI, this is a little off-topic but if you are right about the apple varieties, you actually have a good combination. In my small orchard I have three Red Delicious and one Granny Smith plus several other varieties, so the "leftovers" are usually RD and GS.

So, in a good year I will make a quaffer from the leftovers and it turns out to be really good.

Your apples might be a little bit different to mine but in general terms this is what I get, so you probably don't need to measure ph, TA, etc if you don't have the equipment to do this...

Red Delicious SG 1.045, pH 4.0, TA 4.25g/L
Granny Smith SG1.047, pH 3.6, TA 8.5g/L

Last year (2023) a blend of about 60% RD and 40% GS (it was actually 70+42 apples for 5 litres) gave me a pH of 3.8 and TA 5.7g/L which was just about right without any adjustment. After fermentation to 1.000 (only a few weeks with AS2 and 1/4 tsp of DAP) the end result was pH 3.6, TA 6g/L, ABV 6%, which was pretty much spot on.

I added sugar to SG1.005 for carbonation and bottled.

It didn't need any sweetening, but for a touch more sweetness (say, like 1/4 teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee). I would double the sugar then hot waterbath pasteurise when the carbonation is around a couple of volumes of C02 (10 minutes @ 65C result in a short term worst case bottle pressure of around 100psi). The squeeze bottle test works O.K. for this, i.e. bottle some of the cider in a plastic bottle and pasteurise the other bottles when the plastic bottle is firm.

Cheers!








l

 

[fluketamer]

FYI, this is a little off-topic but if you are right about the apple varieties, you actually have a good combination. In my small orchard I have three Red Delicious and one Granny Smith plus several other varieties, so the "leftovers" are usually RD and GS.

So, in a good year I will make a quaffer from the leftovers and it turns out to be really good.

Your apples might be a little bit different to mine but in general terms this is what I get, so you probably don't need to measure ph, TA, etc if you don't have the equipment to do this...

Red Delicious SG 1.045, pH 4.0, TA 4.25g/L
Granny Smith SG1.047, pH 3.6, TA 8.5g/L

Last year (2023) a blend of about 60% RD and 40% GS (it was actually 70+42 apples for 5 litres) gave me a pH of 3.8 and TA 5.7g/L which was just about right without any adjustment. After fermentation to 1.000 (only a few weeks with AS2 and 1/4 tsp of DAP) the end result was pH 3.6, TA 6g/L, ABV 6%, which was pretty much spot on.

I added sugar to SG1.005 for carbonation and bottled.

It didn't need any sweetening, but for a touch more sweetness (say, like 1/4 teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee). I would double the sugar then hot waterbath pasteurise when the carbonation is around a couple of volumes of C02 (10 minutes @ 65C result in a short term worst case bottle pressure of around 100psi). The squeeze bottle test works O.K. for this, i.e. bottle some of the cider in a plastic bottle and pasteurise the other bottles when the plastic bottle is firm.

Cheers!








l

i havent had great luck getting the gas right in the squeeze bottle before pasteurizing they usually are not carbed enough. i usually get scared and boil it to early probably.

could i use store bought grannys and reds and still get a decent cider . i am trying to see if its worth it as compared to my juice cider.

 

[Chalkyt]

I don't see why store bought apples wouldn't work quite well. The charcteristics of apples vary from year to year but are generally similar. For example, I have figures for the RD and GS from a few years ago at RD SG1.053, pH 4.3, TA 2.6 and GS 1.046, pH 3.5, TA 9.2... not dissimilar to the 2023 figures. i.e. RD (high pH, low TA) blended with GS (low pH, high TA).

The other "sleeping" characteristic of RD is that the skins are high in tannin. Following a clue from Thomas Chezem I have fermented on surplus RD skins (i.e. preserve the apples for pies etc and keep rather than discard the skins). The tannin in the skins makes quite a difference and it certainly enhances the colour of the cider.

As far as pasteurising pressure is concerned, I use a test bottle with flip top (Grolsch type) seal fitted with a pressure gauge so I can see what the actual carbonation is, although i find thata firm squeeze bottle works O.K.. Bear in mind that the usual carbonation level of 2.5 volumes comprises 1 volume already in the cider from fermentation and 1.5 volumes from the priming sugar. So, you only need about 20psi "fizz" pressure.

 

[fluketamer]

Do you keep the peels frozen til you have a decent amount ?

And do you have to do anything else to them to kill wild bugs?
And how many apple skins for 5 gallons
And would gala or honey crisp skins work as good as RD ?


Thanks.

 

[Chalkyt]

Yes, I froze the peel until I had enough or was ready to use it. My approach has been to put the peel in the primary fermenter, occupying about 20% of the space and rely on the usual "bug killing" ability of the cider to deal with any nasties i.e. campden (potassium metabisulphite) plus the acidity and alcohol.

The quantity of peel only occupied about 10% of the volume. From memory, my 5L fermenter still produced over 4 L of cider since there is a fair bit of space between the strips of peel and there was flesh attached which also gave up juice.

The peel becomes pale and gives up the flavour and colour after which I can rack to secondary for maturing, adjusting acidity, or whatever. My approach isn't very scientific or necessarily the optimum quantity or process. The article on Chezem's web site doesn't go into a lot of detail but the way I did it just seemed to be about right and it worked O.K.

Red peel is supposed to be more effective than yellow or green peel but I believe it works for any type of apple. I had two batches of RD &GS, one with and one without peel. I preferred the "with" version and that is about as scientific as I can get.

 

[jnesselrode]

i havent had great luck getting the gas right in the squeeze bottle before pasteurizing they usually are not carbed enough. i usually get scared and boil it to early probably.

I'm struggling with that too. My last 3-gallon batch was way under-carbed. I probably mis-measured the priming sugar, but the test bottle was pretty hard so I pasteurized. Nothin but a slight pfst when I open them. The flavor is very good, but would benefit from some carbonation.

I have another 3-gallon batch bottled and the test bottle is quite firm after 1 week. I'm thinking about pasteurizing half soon and giving the rest more time.

 

[Maylar]

You can monitor the sample bottle's pressure and pasteurize when it reaches about 25 PSI. See this post:

pressure gage

 

[fluketamer]

You can monitor the sample bottle's pressure and pasteurize when it reaches about 25 PSI. See this post:

pressure gage

this is very good idea.

plus

will likely work well.
im going to have to give this another try . the squeeze test is obviusly not accurate enough

i would really liek to bottle some of my ciders and wish they came out as good as the backsweetened kegged ones.

 

[Chalkyt]

The issue of carbonation has been rattling around a fair bit recently, so I have just posted "Using a pressure gauge for monitoring carbonation". This goes into a fair bit of detail about monitoring bottle pressure and what it means. Also attached is a write-up on how I monitor bottle pressure using a Grolsch Bottle fitted with a pressure gauge which was originally inspired by Maylar's approach outlined above. I hope this helps clarify the "mystery" of carbonation.
Cheers!

 

[SkyPilot]

The issue of carbonation has been rattling around a fair bit recently, so I have just posted "Using a pressure gauge for monitoring carbonation". This goes into a fair bit of detail about monitoring bottle pressure and what it means. Also attached is a write-up on how I monitor bottle pressure using a Grolsch Bottle fitted with a pressure gauge which was originally inspired by Maylar's approach outlined above. I hope this helps clarify the "mystery" of carbonation.
Cheers!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/using-a-pressure-gauge-for-monitoring-carbonation.734388/