Quick and easy cider recipes?

[arienjaynes21]

Anyone have any quick and easy sparkling hard cider recipes want to get some started for summer

 

[mikerlynch26]

Not to sound snarky, but literally you just pour apple juice into a fermenter, add yeast, slap on an airlock, and wait. You can of course geek out and do a whole series of other steps/additions/techniques, but basically that's it. The result will be a bone dry, 6ish% cider. For sparkling, just prime with sugar or 3/4 of a can of applejuice concentrate and bottle/condition like you would beer.

If you want to up the game a little here are some simple ideas:
- Use the best quality juice you can get, either flash pasteurized or with ascorbic acid (vitamin c)
- Use Lalvin 71b wine yeast, tends to round out any malic acid from the juice, or Nottingham ale yeast, tends to play well with the fruity flavors
- 5 tsp of yeast nutrient in with your yeast, keeps them happy
- Stir or shake the carboy once or twice a day for the first week to 2 weeks. This blows off any sulfur so it won't effect the flavor later. It'll smell like rhino farts during primary
- Leave it alone. Cider takes longer to ferment and condition than beer, 2 - 3 months is not uncommon. This is even longer if you add sugar to bump up the ABV

Other than that, take a look at these forums, there's a lot of variations and techniques to try out. Have fun and let us know how it turns out!

 

[jerbrew]

Good Juice is really it. I like to add 2 cans of apple juice concentrate for my cider. I usually make 2.5 gallons at a time. As for yeast I've used S-04, Nottingham, us-05, wlp007 lately been using some Cry Havoc i had in the fridge which has been making some really tasty clean cider. Current batch is a copitch of cry havoc and some crazy named dannish yeast from white labs yeast vault. Sometimes I'll through a handful or two of hops from the freezer into the fermenter to dry hop it. I've never felt the need for acid or tannin adjustments. I was steeping some tea bags in warm juice cuz I read that somewhere for tannin additions but I forgot once and didn't notice a difference so I skip it now. honestly cider takes me about 5 minutes to get into a fermenter and pitched. Is it the best cider in the world? Probably not. But it tastes good and always goes pretty fast.

 

[z-bob]

Aldi's apple juice (the regular stuff is fine; I haven't tried the "organic"), white wine yeast (not champagne yeast), and a little yeast energizer. That's it.

Watch out for fancy juices with preservatives. Fresh juice from an orchard usually has benzoates added and won't ferment.

I have a bunch of old jars of homemade jelly that are turning brown. (still taste okay, but if I haven't eaten them yet I'm sure not going to now) I've been mixing a jar of jelly with a gallon of juice lately to get rid of them. The brown drops out when it's done fermenting. I just bottled some apple-hibiscus cider last night I think I started it about 6 weeks ago.

 

[arienjaynes21]

That's what I have heard is it usually takes 3-6 weeks for cider made from store bought juice, I also read online you get a pretty good flavour if you use a ale yeast I might buy a few air locks a few gallon jugs and compare the different juices, also I want to try one with brown sugar vs the table sugar or dme I would use with beer

 

[arienjaynes21]

Would fermenting in the plastic juice jug be a problem?

 

[MindenMan]

No, you can ferment just as well in the plastic jug the juice was purchased in. I have 6 plastic jugs going right now and I have had no problems; as long as there is CO2 being made, you don't have to worry about O2 getting in.

 

[z-bob]

Plastic jugs are fine. But see if you can get some 4L glass Carlo Rossi jugs from your wino friends, or from the local recycling center. They work really well (and take a #6.5 stopper)

 

[arienjaynes21]

Awesome thanks for the tips

 

[arienjaynes21]

Any tips on adding frozen fruit to add some flavour? This summer I will have to pick some blackberries a make a fresh batch from wild blackberries

 

[phendog]

Try using White Labs WLP775 English Cider Yeast - I am a huge fan.

I often make 1gal batches using Old Orchard Apple concentrate. Sometimes I mix it with organic cold pressed cherry, tart cherry, white grape juice or some other non-citrus juice. White labs say's it will ferment out to ~12%. I've got 10% max.

Get the FG right and you can balance the right amount of sweet-to-dry ratio with this yeast given your OG.

 

[arienjaynes21]

I think I'll be more of a sweeter cider fan I'm not sure yet though, I will have to check the lhbs to see if they have any cider yeast very small store might have to venture to the next town with the bigger store

 

[mikerlynch26]

Any tips on adding frozen fruit to add some flavour? This summer I will have to pick some blackberries a make a fresh batch from wild blackberries

Yes. I post this pic all the time but the warning needs to be repeated. Leave enough headspace in your fermenter to account for the floating fruit, or use a very wide blowoff tube. Even chopped up or blended fruit will still have little bits, and those little bits can get stuck in airlocks. What's more, they act like nucleation sites for the dissolved co2, think Mentos and Coke. And when that happens, this happens:

 

[arienjaynes21]

I didn't know that could happen from fruit in the secondary thanks for the info