cider

[chadspad]

Having lost the will to live after searching thru tons of threads looking for an old cider recipe on here - can anyone help me please? Im sure, possibly Stonehead, had a recipe for making cider with real apples very easily. Not the turbo stuff that just used fruit juice but one that said about not using metal to cut the apples down. If ayone can help me find it please would be much appreciated!

[ina]

It's on the main site - under home brew!

[red]

I've made successful cider by pressing apples to get juice, and adding cider yeast.. bung in demijohn..

theres ltos fo sicence about having the right sort of apples etc.. but i used the ones we had.

[Muscroj]

I'm no help I'm afraid, I've got 48 bottles of vile tasting 'cider' I lovingly made from our apples last year. 2 hours we spent harvesting them & 4 hours we spent juicing them only to end up with acidic nastiness!

I'm currently experimenting by trying to turn a couple of bottles into cider vinegar, but nothing has happened with that so far.

This year I will be leaving out the camden tablets and going for an eau naturel recipe, so let us know if you have any luck!

[MKG]

@Muscroj - I'm no cider expert, but it MAY be worth your while putting a gallon into a demijohn with some crushed eggshells (or even precipitated chalk if you happen to have some to hand) to reduce the acidity, and then adding a little sugar afterwards to sweeten it up a tad. It'll end up still, but what have you got to lose?

Mike

[Muscroj]

ooh, I'll give that a go, I'll try anything that saves me from flushing the entire lot down the sink!

Any idea what sort of volume of eggshells I'd need for a gallon?

[red]

the other thing you could try is mulling your cider - add sugar to counter the acid and some cinnamon sticks.. that might be nice?

i drank a lot of my cider mulled last winter.

[chadspad]

Thanks everyone. Ina - der, I didnt think to check the main site lol - thanks very much

[MKG]

No idea how much eggshell, really. Best, I suppose, to put one in - and then if it disappears completely, you'll know you might need a little more. My guess, though, is that one would be more than enough.

If it works, I think your best way of proceeding would be to take the cider you want to drink from the demijohn and top up from your other bottles, adding eggshell if required. That way, all of the bottles get cycled eventually.

One thought does occur to me - are you absolutely sure that the awful taste is really acid, rather than tannin? Is it sharp or bitter? There's a lot of tannin in apple skins. If it is tannin, your only hope is to mask the taste - Red's mulling is an ideal way to do that.

Mike

[Cheezy]

@Muscroj - I'm no cider expert, but it MAY be worth your while putting a gallon into a demijohn with some crushed eggshells (or even precipitated chalk if you happen to have some to hand) to reduce the acidity, and then adding a little sugar afterwards to sweeten it up a tad. It'll end up still, but what have you got to lose?

Mike

Cider's funny stuff, you usually should do all the alterations to pH, tannin, before brewing as you can get some strange hazes and flavour developments.

This is the cider guru:

http://www.cider.org.uk (Andrew Lea, i've just ordered his re-issued book: Craft cider making, it's meant to be a classic)

On his site he says's there is a new forum for questions:
http://ciderworkshop.com/

I'd try them.

And the pH is not related to camden tablets read Andrew's site, it's the apples you used, I'm guessing they were cookers, I had the same problem, but adjusted the pH before brewing.
If you don't use camden tabs then you run the risk of going straight to cider vinegar

[Muscroj]

OK, how do you know if you've not got the right PH to start with? Do you have to test. The flavor of the juice before brewing was lovely, quite sweet, it was about 50% cookers/50% eaters. I think it was probably left in the bucket way too long as it fermented really well in the first week & then stopped but we didn't get around to bottling it for a few weeks as we were having major house alterations.

I'll go & have a look at those links you've given me, would really like to make use of the apples this year as we have way too many to eat & I'm not a fan of cooked apple, so cider would be perfect :/

Sorry, I seem to have hijacked this thread!!!

[Cheezy]

I'm luckly I have a great (and famous) home brew shop in our town, they have a web site:

http://www.hopandgrape.co.uk/catalog/de ... HS20233231&

you want 2.8 to 4.6 pH test strips, just dip em in.

THe problem with cookers is that they tend to go mushy on pressing, leaving a large amount of pectin in to the juice, this can be removed with pectinase enzyme.

The cider will under go a second fermentation , later in the year, which can round off the sharpness (malic acid to lactic acid conversion)

Next time I would use if possible less cookers,and add some crab apples ( for the tannin), or wild apples, this will get you a more complex flavour

[Muscroj]

The cider will under go a second fermentation , later in the year, which can round off the sharpness (malic acid to lactic acid conversion)

does it do this in the bottle? Even though I've used camden tablets to kill the yeasts? So if I leave it even longer (it's been in the bottles about 9 months now) it may still have a chance to improve?

THe problem with cookers is that they tend to go mushy on pressing, leaving a large amount of pectin in to the juice, this can be removed with pectinase enzyme.

hmm, now I used a juice extractor rather than a press as we had one already, I did loads of research to try & find a reason why we shouldn't but couldn't come up with anything, however perhaps juicing them leaves too much pectin in the juice too?

I have a home brew shop just a few mins from our house, unfortunately the woman I spoke to knew less than nothing about making cider & was only interested in selling us kits. She actually sold us kilos & kilos of sugar, which we later took back, although now I'm wondering if the cider would have tasted better with some added sugar!

[craig.r]

I made some last year but only about a litre. i used a mixture of eating, cooking and crab apples. i used a cheap multipurpose wine yeast and it tasted great. i wish i had made a lot more, gonning too this year

[benner]

Last ySeptember I did a freecycle request for apples, I got loads of different varieties; mainly eaters like cox, katy and loads of massive eaters, no idea what variety they were but these were mainly what I used. A few cookers and a carrier a bag of crab and wilds from local hedgerows.

Grated them in a food processor left the mush for 5 -7 days and pressed the juice out, no campden tablet or added yeast, fermented in DJ's in garden shed, tasted great by March/ April!