Friday, October 10, 2008

Hard Apple Cider...from scratch

that's right, none of this "start with x gallons of preservative free apple juice," crap. real apple cider, made from real apples. here's how to do a 4 gallon batch. start by picking out about 40 good looking apples. from what i read in preperation you want to use a 2/1 ration of different apple types. for a sweet cider use 2/1 sweet to tart, for dry cider use 2/1 tart to sweet. i said to hell with that (as i don't really know much about apple flavor profile except for red delicious and granny smith, to be quite honest) and picked up about 5 apples from each of 8 different apple types. the 8 varieties used where: red delicious, golden delicious, granny smith, ambrosia, fugi, honey crisp, macintosh, and braeburn. all apples were peeled, cored, and sliced. I then stewed the apples (with a gallon of spring water) and then cooled them, mashed them and pureed them. once all the apples were pureed, they were put back in the pot with 4 cups of brown sugar and cooked again to make sure none of those little beer spoiling critters survived. the apples were then chilled again and then dumped in a five gallon carboy and topped up to 4 gallons with more spring water. six whole cloves, a dash of allspice, and a little under a table spoon of ground cinnamon when into the carboy as well. aeration then followed as well as a packet of mr. beer liquid lager yeast and a packet of mr. beer standard brew yeast. unfortunately i forgot to measure the original gravity, so i can't tell you guys what the %abv will be. not to let it just ferment away. i let you guys know how it turns out in a few weeks

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

mmm...Cider

Anonymous said...

Cider is delicious, best of luck with it. We're about to start making our own beer.

For the future, if you like, I can post you a link to an apple chart that gives what they are useful for -- which means it will give the ones that are most/least useful for making into cider.

Honeycrisp cider is *delicious*. Much like anything else to do with honeycrisps.

Good luck!

fuzzydeath said...

the apple chart will be much appreciated. what kind of beer will you be making, out of curiosity?