First time making cider

Brian2208

Hey, I've been thinking about making some cider and I'm looking for some help. I have one of the Coopers homebrew kits and I've made a few different batches of beer which have all turned out pretty good.

Now, I'd like to try some cider as I've a few apple trees around the house and too many apples, there's only so much apple crumble I can handle!

So I'm wondering what I'll need to make it, how much apples I'll need for about 23 litres and how long it'll take. Any help appreciated!

Khannie

23 litres from apples will take around 30-35KG of apples. To get the juice from them you've two options really; A press or a juicer. I juiced 17 litres of pears before and burned out the motor on my juicer, so if you're using a juicer, give it breaks.

Buying a press is an option, but they're pricey enough for just a single run.

It's a good idea to put some cooking apples in with eating apples (I think 10% is a good mix if memory serves) to give it some bite.

Brew time will be ~2 weeks. Probably less if you're using a juicer because it aerates the juice quite a bit.

One piece of advice is to pass juicer apple juice through a fine strainer of some kind if you can. Otherwise it becomes hassle to get the brewed cider out from the "gick".

Brian2208

thanks Khannie, that's helpful. But what would happen if I used less apples and just topped it up with water? Would I have to add sugar? And do I need to add yeast?

Khannie

Yeah, you need to add yeast. It is possible to get away without it, but I wouldn't recommend it. Adding water will just make it taste very thin. Think apple juice versus watered down apple juice.

You can add sugar if you want to bump the alcohol percentage. Personal choice there really.

Carawaystick

If the apples have that slight tacky feel on their skins, that's more than likely the yeast you need to ferment, but it could be awful,
You could ferment some pure juice in a 2/3l plastic bottle
And add yeast to the main lot, so that would definitely ferment out right

Of the cider with the wild yeast ferments out nice, you'll be much more confident of it working out again next year.

It's nature though and wild yeast is wild. But the first ciders were brewed this way



Also have a look at the start of the turbo cider thread,

Chimaera

I'm coming to the end of my first batch of cider and have learned a few things along the way.

I had a fairly small batch of apples and pressed them by hand getting about 3.2 l of juice. I topped this up to 5 l with Lidl Cloudy Apple juice.

A hydrometer is useful for determining sugar content starting out. Andrew Lea's site (http://www.cider.org.uk/part3.htm) has a table showing sugar content for different density readings, along with expected alcohol content. You can bump up the sugar content by adding sugar: I made a concentrated sugar syrup (200 g sugar to 250 ml hot water)to bump up mine without diluting it too much. I'm only working with 5 l of juice though: you will need more sugar for 23 l of juice.

I'd recommend using a pectic enzyme on the juice. This will release a little more sugar and shed a lot of the remaining solid material from the juice. You'll still have a cloudy juice but without the bits of pulped apple in it.

You might wish to add some sodium metabisulphite to the juice before starting your fermentation. This kills off any microbes present in the juice so that your brewing yeast has a free run at it. Some people might prefer to rely on the wild yeasts present in the juice, but the advice I saw for beginners was to stick with the cultured yeast for your first attempt. The sulphite should be left overnight to do its work before you add the yeast. Addition level is important. Again, Andrew Lea goes into this in some detail.

Most importantly, if you plan to make a habit of this, take lots of notes about what you've done and when. It'll be useful for improving or changing things the next time.

Things I'll probably do differently next time:

Get a proper press. I juiced my apples by hand, and probably lost 1-1.5 l of juice as a result.

Add the pectic enzyme at the start, during juicing. I added it 9 days into the fermentation. The main problem this introduces is that removing suspended solids will have changed the density of the liquid without actually changing the sugar/alcohol content much. Based on my observations though, the fermentation was more or less done at this point.

Add the sugar at the start. The sugar solution I added increased the total sugar content by 4 % w/v (so I added 40 g per litre of juice) but I added it after the original fermentation had completed. It's fermenting away fine again after adding a little more yeast but it would probably have been better for this to go in from the start.

pH checking/correction on the juice. I've no idea if I had any need to do this or not, but it's one of those loose ends I'd like to have tied up

Yeast nutrient. I didn't add any, and things have gone fine, but again one of those things that might help a little.

Carawaystick

Chimaera wrote: »

Most importantly, if you plan to make a habit of this, take lots of notes about what you've done and when. It'll be useful for improving or changing things the next time.

^^^^^^
This is probably the most important thing for a brewer
Given the time between starting and drinking, you will forget lots.
Take "soft" notes as well as hard data like times,temperatures&weights, like when you added stuff, how you did it, if there was anything unexpected, or you forgot something until midway through
Also might be an idea to write a checklist, not so much as a checklist, bit to make you plan it out ahead and then you'll "know" what step is next, rather than flicking in a website or book

Brian2208

Thanks everyone, very helpful. I think I might just make less of the stuff rather than pressing enough apples for 23L by hand!
I've a feeling it's not going to be the best of cider the first time around but maybe next year I'll have something decent!

Tube

A couple of guys in the NHC have cider presses (you can read about them in the forums) and a lot of us are making cider at the moment due to a 1,500L bulk buy of fresh juice from Tipperary.

I'm not particularly experienced at making cider, but a couple of my own observations are
- Use yeast nutrient or you risk a sulphide smell and possible flavour from your cider. This can happen very easily.
- From a kitchen juicer expect about 50% extraction. i.e. 2Kg of apples will give you 1L of juice.
- From a home made press it will be up to 50% but could be as low as 20%
- If you're only dealing with small amounts, you can pasteurise it by heating it to 80C for about 10 mins. You can boil it either but apparently it will never clear if you boil it.
- Nottingham ale yeast is apparently the best of all the homebrew yeasts available. Supposedly imparts a better flavour than cider, wine or champagne yeasts. I can't verify this yet myself though