Question:
That’s what I’m looking for, good cider recipes. I’ve been brewing beer for a while now, and I want to take a stab. Please specify what kind of yeast to use, because I’ve heard different things. Thanks. Take care, Paul
paul, i am in the lager/ale camp, wine yeasts make the cider much too dry. i do recommend you get a balanced apple mix in your cider. this year, I am making 25 gallons. buy as late in the season as possible. my cider mill has by now very sweet cider, 25% each of montrose, idared, gold and red delicious. I wish it could be 50% russets and 50% spies, but that will never happen, those apples are too expensive. still, not a bad mix. of the cheap apples, gold delicious and jonathan are probably best, macintosh the poorest. make sure some of the apples are tart, and some parfumed. Ph of 2.8-4.0 and sugar content anywhere above 4 (my guys have 5.5, with the last 3 weeks of dry weather!). all right. now, the five recipes. all will be fermented over the winter and bottled in May. All are sparkling excet the barrel cider. advise to be patient till next fall, once malo-lactic fermentation sets in the cider becomes much more mellow. To sparkle, your usual 3/4 cup of sugar at bottling time will do. Rack all of them three times, you should be able to get it crystal clear. remember this is cider, not beer: it has a Ph of 3.5 and is very forgiving of repeated racking, as well as not boiling the stuff (don’t boil it! and get pure cider from a trusted mill), and general sloppiness. – 50% apple, 50% peach juice (have a juicer). lager yeast. rack a few times, this has got sediment. probably drinkable by summer, and a great summer drink. -80% apple, 20% concord grape juice. ale yeast. my yearly experiment on fruit cider. cherry and raspberry cider are excellent, but concord is as flavored, as colored, and in season. – barrel cider (this is from memory, beware). 100% cider, about six pounds of sugar, epernay yeast (champagne OK also). After primary, dump in 3-4 pounds of preservative-free raisins (if you put them in with preservatives, disaster will occur). Add spices to taste (suggest 1oz cinnamon, 2 oz dried orange peel). Rack the gunk after approximately 6 weeks. In the last two weeks, add a small bag of oak chips for tannins and extra complexity. This one should be a deep golden, and still. Let age, and will last years. – plain cider, lager yeast. – plain cider, ale yeast. this might be the last time I do lager, I think ale is the perfect yeast for cider. great for summer.
Response:
I just finished my first batch of Hard cider and boy oh boy is it yummy! here’s the recipie. 5 gallons Fresh apple cider. (picked mine up at the farmers market) 2 lbs honey 1 lb brown sugar 1/2 cup botteling sugar (mine is carbonated, yours can be still with out this) 10 cinnamon sticks. 2 wyeast american ale I used the smack pack of yest, my biggest concern was the wild yeast in the cider. I really did not want to pasturize the whole five gallons so i used double yeast. bring one gallon of the cider to 160 degrees. add 5 cinnamon sticks, honey and brown sugar. Stir for 15 minutes. You want the cinnamon to flavor your starter. meanwhile pour 3 gallons of the fresh cider into your primary fermenter. reserve 1 gallon for later! pour the "wort" into your primary. When the temperature gets down below 80. Pitch your yeast. ferment for 1 week in primary. for secondary ferment. Pour the remaining gallon that was reserved eariler into your secondary. Siphon the week old cider ontop of the fresh. cap and ferment for 1 more week. at botteling time. bring 2 cups of water to a boil with the 5 remaining cinnamon sticks. Boil for 15 minutes and then add the 1/2 cup of botteling sugar. bottel as normal allow to condition in the bottle for 2 weeks. This stuff is great! my friends love it! It’s pretty strong unfortunatly i failed to do the measures before and after. Btw. I created this recipe. I read every cider recipie that i could find on the net and this is sort of a combination of the best and most sensible formulas i found. thanks steve. ps. I used the same formula for peach cider. Its conditioning now. It smells GREAT! That’s what I’m looking for, good cider recipes. I’ve been brewing beer for a while now, and I want to take a stab. Please specify what kind of yeast to use, because I’ve heard different things. Thanks. Take care, Paul
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Response:
Dry Cider Classification: cider, Woodpecker cider, Blackthorn cider #1435, 5/28/94 First of all let me say that the quality of the finished product depends heavily on the flavor of the cider that you start with. Being here in Ohio we dont really get the best cider apples so the quality is probably not quite up to what you can get in New England. I hear that Northern Spy is one of the very best cider apples. That said though, any good quality, fresh, unpasteurized cider will make a perfectly acceptable hard cider. Ingredients: 5 gallons cider good quality wine yeast ( (I find Lalvin 71B-1122 Narbonne to be excellent) 3/4 cup corn sugar (priming) Procedure: Simply pitch a good quality wine yeast (I find Lalvin 71B-1122 Narbonne to be excellent) into your fresh, unpasteurized and unfiltered cider. Rack after 1 week and bottle with corn sugar (3/4c for 5 gal) when the cider is crystal clear. – Note #1: My experience is that cider has a SG of 1.040 – 1.055 so the resulting hard cider will be in the 5% abv range. – Note #2: Some folks like to kill off the wild yeast with bisulfite before pitching their wine yeast, but I find that this is unnecissary and leads to unplesant residual sulfur taste. Sweet and Strong Still Cider Classification: cider, sweet cider #1435, 5/28/94 Definitely something to be enjoyed in moderation. It is however absolutely wonderful. The spices give it a kind of christmas-y feel that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy (or maybe thats the alcohol 8*). This would also make some absolutely WICKED apple-jack if someone were to freeze some of the finished product (though I would never advocate such irresponsible, illegal and dangerous behaviour 
. Ingredients: (for 3 gallons) 3 gal fresh (unpasteurized etc.) apple cider 4 lbs light brown sugar 1 lb dark brown sugar 9 grams of crushed cinnamon stick 10 whole cloves (crushed before adding) 1 tsp yeast energizer (the kind that’s a mixture of urea and B-vitamins) 10 g of Lalvin 71B-1122 Procedure: Dissolve sugar in cider (you can warm it to help the sugar dissolve) and add everything to your fermenter. Fermeneted wildly in primary for about 2 weeks then took about 7 weeks in secondary to clear sufficiently to bottle. I dont remember what the abv works out to be on this stuff but its HIGH. Specifics: O.G.: 1.120 F.G.: 1.002 (pretty impressive huh?) First Time Cider Classification: cider, hard cider 11/28/94 I’ve had really outstanding luck with a recipe out of a wine-making book, which I thought I’d include here. Some of the ingredients are wine-specific, but I found them all in my local brew shop. Ingredients: (for 5 gallons) 5 gallons unpreserved cider sugar or apple concentrate to raise O.G. to 1060 2 tablespposn pectic enzyme 2 teaspoons liquid tannin (or dry tannin) 1-1/2 campden tables 1 or 2 packs champagne yeast or ale yeast 1 or 2 packs yeast nutrient Procedure: Mix all but yeast and nutrient, wait one day for sulphites to dissipate. Pitch yeast. Champagne yeast will give you dry cider, ale yeast a sweeter cider (which I prefer). Ferment to completion, rack to carboy, age one month, bottle with 3/4 cups corn or brown sugar (try using 1 litre PET bottles). For best results, use the second set of ingreds. to make a starter mixture with 0.5 cups sugar in 1 cup boiled water on the first day and pitch the lot the second day. For most predictable (sp?) sweet cider results, use champagne yeast. When complete and aged, add sulphite to kill the yeast, add 10+ oz Wine Conditioner for sweetnes (to taste), filter, and sparkle with CO2. (too much work for me) With champagne yeast this goes to completion rather fast (<1 week). Note that with ale yeast you’re fermenting close to the yeast’s alc tolerance (this finishes at quite low FG), so fermentation may go on slowly for quite some time (2+ weeks). Unlike beer, this gets _much_ better over time (it’s apple wine, I guess). My 2-year-old first batch is really great now, even though it tasted sort of yeast-y at first. I’d wait at least a month before drinking, though you may want to open a few early for the holidays. Specifics: O.G.: 1060 F.G.: 0.997 – 0.960 cheers
Response:
That’s what I’m looking for, good cider recipes. I’ve been brewing beer for a while now, and I want to take a stab. Please specify what kind of yeast to use, because I’ve heard different things. Thanks. Take care, Paul — *Paul T. Sheridan Columbia University* *http://www.columbia.edu/~pts1 1116 Amsterdam Ave.* *(212)853-7884 New York, NY 10027 *
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