First Apple Cider, 2012

Compared to beer, making apple cider is easy. You start apple juice, sanitize a carboy, add yeast, and let sit for a few weeks before bottling. Total labor should be less than a half-hour not including bottling.

Although this will be my first time, I can expect that in making cider the quality of the apple juice is very important. We settled on 5 gallons of organic, unfiltered, fresh (but pasteurized) for about $25 from a local health food store. The yeast options are many but the "apple cider community" seems to agree on a few tried and true standards such as nottingham english ale yeast or white labs english cider yeast (WLP775). Our local HBS had the latter so we went with that. Some people who like a very dry (as in, not much sugar left because its all been converted to alcohol) cider might go with wine or champagne yeast.





Other things to shoot for are a slow fermentation (don't make a starter, reduce normal aeration techniques prior to adding yeast, ferment at cooler temperatures) so that you don't blow off too much apple flavor and allow for a long maturation period to for the taste to reach its full potential. 

Potential adjuncts include tannins for a more complex and "wild" taste, pectic enzyme to help solids to form and fall out for a clearer product (kind of like irish moss for beer), unfermentable sugars for a little extra sweetness in the final product, and possibly some natural apple flavoring if you feel it loses too much in the fermentation.

With that being said here is the recipe we put together:

Ingredients
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5 gallons of pasteurized organic unfiltered apple juice
2 tsp Pectic Enzyme
1/2 Tsp yeast nutrient (keep it low to encourage slow fermentation)
WLP775 White labs apple cider yeast (No starter).

4.5 grams Sorbistat K @ 4 weeks to cause yeast to drop out (1 gram/gallon)
.9 grams of Potassium Metabisulfite @ 4 weeks to ensure yeast sterility (.2 grams/gallon)

Schedule
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~ Ferment in Primary for 3 weeks
~ Ferment in Secondary for 1 week
~ Add Sorbistat K in a bit of warm water (can filter through a coffee filter to ensure no particles get through), Add Potassium Meabisulfite in warm water as well
~ 1 week later, flush a keg with c02 and rack the cider off the remaining yeast into the keg. Add sanitized (boiled) corn sugar and a pinch of citric acid, and pressurize the keg to carbonate
~ 1 week later, bottle cider

4/6/2012 - Sanitized carboy. Added apple juice from a height and oscillated by hand for 90 seconds to slightly aerate. Added air lock, left to ferment in a cool-ish place (below between 60-65F. Fermentation was nice and slow and didn't taper off until about 3 weeks had passed.

4/21/2012 - Tasted, tested gravity at 1.001. AVB at 6.5%. Tastes dry and tart with a hint of apple. There is quite a bit of sediment and cloudiness sitting low in the liquid. Could have used  a bit more pectic enzyme. Still appears to be bubbling slowly I think fermentation is still happening

4/30/2012 - Sanitized secondary (wish we could have flushed with c02 but lack the means), and racked. Gravity at .098. Cider had cleared significantly. Tasted good. A hint of sweetness and apple flavor but very dry. This will sit another 2 weeks. 

7/4/2012 - Just finished the last of the cider and I was very happy with it. This simple recipe really came through and I will definitely make it again. Next time I will forego the Sobistate K and the Potassium Metabisulfite because I never even need to backsweeting the natural flavor profile was just right.