Table Cider

[bransona]

Hi, all! New cider maker here. I'm halfway through making my first apfelwein, and I can't wait to try it later today when I gravity test. SWMBO is gluten free, so all of my beer making has her feeling a little left out While I'm excited for my big 12% apfelwein, I'd really like to make her some low abv table cider to enjoy. Every commercial example around here (bold rock, Crispin, angry orchard to name local and mass produced) is just too sweet, so I'm looking to make a dry to semi-dry ~4% abv sparkling cider.

To do this, I'll obviously need something of much lower gravity than pure cider. Can I blend several jugs of cider with water until I hit a desirable og? I have two huge fermenters that I don't use for beer anymore, so I thought I would just make her one big batch in on of those. Also, what gluten free yeasts would you recommend? I'm using montrachet currently, but also thought about using s-04.

I don't really want to back sweeten much, if at all, but I would just pasteurize I'd I choose to backsweeten when I bottle condition.

Also, I found these swanky swingtop bottles of French lemonade for a buck each, so I figured I could use those for cider things that I don't dry hop.

Any advice for a newb?

 

[Maylar]

Watering down juice to lower SG would be a bad idea. You won't have any taste at all when it's done. Also, if your juice is lower than about 1.045 the cider will have low shelf life (alcohol is a preservative).

Yeasts that are completely gluten free:
All Fermentis Safale and Saflager Dry Yeasts - US05, S04, S33, T58, WB06, etc.
All Danstar/Lallemand/DCL Labs Dry Yeast Products - Nottingham, Windsor, etc.
Red Star Wine and Champagne Yeast - Montrachet, Pasteur, etc.

 

[MichaelBrock]

A dry cider at ~4% is going to be tough. As Maylar said, watering it down is just going to water down the flavor, which is hard enough to come by in a dry cider. Apple juice, fermented dry with an ale yeast, with no added sugar will get to about 5.5%. A more ambitious yeast, like a champagne yeast, will take it down further. I have tried a number of different cider "recipes" but always come back to the simple recipe I started with. It makes a nice, clean semi-dry cider:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=99923

 

[bransona]

A dry cider at ~4% is going to be tough. As Maylar said, watering it down is just going to water down the flavor, which is hard enough to come by in a dry cider. Apple juice, fermented dry with an ale yeast, with no added sugar will get to about 5.5%. A more ambitious yeast, like a champagne yeast, will take it down further. I have tried a number of different cider "recipes" but always come back to the simple recipe I started with. It makes a nice, clean semi-dry cider:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=99923

That's perfect! That's exactly what I'm after. Semi-dry, better than commercial, and won't break the bank at all! I'm hopefully gonna make this within the week