Hard Cider (5 gallons)

After the first run of hard cider, I wanted to make more. I stocked up on 5 1-gallon jugs of cider of the same variety in October, when it was cider season. This stuff made a great product before.

This time, I wanted to try to stay away from the sulfur-sanitation method. Rather than try to heat sanitize, I opted to rely on the sanitation from the company that bottled it. This product was pure apples, sanitized and bottled to be shelf stable.

I also wanted to add a kick to the end product. I included some additional fermentables to the must to boost the alcohol. The only heating that happened to any of the cider was to bring 1 gallon up to 120 degrees to help facilitate the dissolving of sugars.

This was the recipe I concocted:

Ingredients:
5 gallons of cider
2 sticks of Cinnamon
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2.5 tsp yeast energiser
1 lb honey
2 lbs light brown sugar
2 lbs table sugar

Directions:
Warm 1 gallon of cider to 120 degrees with the cinnamon sticks. Dissolve the sugars. Mix with the rest of the cider and add the dry ingredients.

At 4 weeks, fermentation was totally done, but the cider was still cloudy. There were no bubbles coming from the airlock so with enough time I could be sure it wasn't yeast in suspension. The only culprit left was pectin.

I hadn't used pectic enzyme when I started, but at the same time I didn't heat it to the point that would set the pectins. I tried adding pectic enzyme three different times after fermentation but I saw little improvement in clarity.

I ended up stabilizing, kegging, force-carbonating, and back-sweetening the cider with3 cans of frozen apple juice. The end result tastes good - a hint of sweetness, a hit of champagne, some dryness from the carbonation, but looks just as cloudy with the same color as the day it started.

The cloudiness is really just a cosmetic problem, but I disliked it to the point that I didn't give any away. We just finished it and at 10% ABV without the taste, this stuff is dangerous. Hope I can get the next batch to clear out.

Bottling Day and First Samples

Spent several hours this past Saturday bottling the Cherry Wheat Ale, Welch's Wine, and Hard Cider. We did the beer in the typical manner with corn sugar for carbonation. The Welch's Wine and Hard Cider we split between part carbonated and part still. Carbonation was done with Muntons Carb Tabs and all of the still was prepped with the addition of Potassium Sorbate. We also experimented with bottling some of the wine in growlers to save on bottles (still, as growlers are supposedly not suitable for carbonation).

I decided to pull a couple of bottles over the past few days to sample. I started with a bottle each of the cider and wine on Tuesday. It had only been 3 days since bottling, but because they are still, I wasn't waiting for carbonation to happen (really just aging and clarification).

Hard Cider: Very clear, looks very nice, tastes extremely dry. Slight sulphur taste & odor that could be off-putting to some people. That may have been addressable by allowing the cider to "breathe" longer after adding the crushed campden tablet, but I'm not exactly sure. Overall, it's drinkable. I'm thinking the next time I make a cider I'll use a heat pasteurization method and include some maltose for a bit of sweetness.

Welch's Wine: Not quite clear. You can tell that granulated sugar was used as a large part of the fermentables from the trademark "cidery" taste. Clarity will likely improve with aging, but the cidery taste probably isn't going away. Grape flavor is minimal. If I did this again, I would probably go for more of the grape concentrate and switch to corn sugar (not sure why I didn't use that initially).

I tried one of the bottles of the Cherry Wheat Ale last night, 4 days after bottling:

Cherry Wheat Ale: Mild haze. Good taste, but ends with an "extract twang". Cherry flavor would be hard to identify if I didn't know what it was. Carbonation was minimal, but expected after only 4 days. I expect this one to improve over the next couple of weeks.

I've been reading up on "extract twang" since last night, and most people seem to agree it has to do with the use of old extract or particular extract brands. What everyone appears to be all over the board on is how to avoid it. I've read about:

• Full boil
• Late malt extract addition (last 20 - 10 minutes of boil)
  
• Use of dry malt extract exclusively
• Use of "fresh" or "higher quality" liquid malt extracts from reputable manufacturers
• Use of LME in plastic bottles or jars, not metal cans
  
• Addition of yeast nutrient

I'm going to try some of these in my next batch, although probably not the full boil method since my kettle isn't big enough. The batch I just started last weekend used 9.9 lbs of LME, but the recipe called for 3.3 lbs at the start and 6.6 lbs at the end. It's also from Norther Brewer, who distributes in plastic "milk jugs" and moves a lot of product every week - both of which are supposed to contribute to freshness. We'll see. I can drink beers with this "extract twang" but I'd rather not have to if I can avoid it.

Project Update

Last night we racked the Welch's Wine and the cider into their respective "secondary" fermenters. I use quotes because rather than sourcing new containers to use as fermenters, we used a brew bucket (sanitized, of course) as a holding vessel while cleaning out the original container, re-sanitizing it, then racking the wine/cider back into the original container.

I also took the opportunity to taste both, but didn't have too much since there is still some yeast in suspension (drink too much of that and you'll regret it).

Here are some updates on our projects:

Welch's Wine: This tastes surprisingly good. It has a taste similar to a very dry white. If I bottle carbonate some of it, it could even pass for a cheap champagne. It also has a very strong (alcohol) taste.

Hard Cider: Still has a hint of that sulfur odor, but it's fading and I expect it to be gone soon. The flavor imparted by the champagne yeast is very strong. Not much apple taste left. I'm starting to wish I had used a cider or ale yeast instead of trying to use the champagne yeast. It'll still be very drinkable, but I think it's going to turn out more like a weak apple wine than a hard cider.

Cherry Wheat Ale: A small fermentation is still happening from the yeast eating the sugars in the puree. When I have a chance, I'm going to snap a picture to upload. I'm sure the way it looks is nothing out of the ordinary, but the appearance is interesting. It's likely the yeast proliferating then dying betwixt all of the cherry puree bits.

Orange Clove Mead: Primary fermentation is still going strong. Yeast cake is starting to form on the bottom of the jug.

I realized the other day that I intended to document the varieties of yeast I was using for each of these. I'll have to do that on another update.

Hard Cider

I started a batch of hard cider last weekend. Inspired by the mead recipe which uses the jug that the spring water comes in as a fermentation vessel, I decided to use a 2.5 gallon spring water container as a vessel for 2 gallons of hard cider.



For this batch, I wanted to try to fit an airlock to the container somehow, but didn't have an appropriate bung handy. So, I just poked a hole in the brown dispenser cap (which has a very tight fit itself) and crammed the airlock in there. It actually worked out quite nicely.


Overall, using these water jugs for brewing small batches hasn't worked out too bad. They're cheap, sterile from the store (although that didn't stop me from sanitizing them again), and relative large. They're really not designed to be under internal pressure, as can be seen from the ballooning on the sides, but they don't seem to be close to failure. I'm not sure if I'd use a particular container more than one time, though.

The recipe I decided to use was a no-boil, sulfur-sanitized recipe from Mahalo.com. This was my first experience brewing with sulfur sanitised anything, so I was a little bit perplexed by the sulfur smell coming out of the airlock at first (not a rotten egg smell, though). It's since subsided, and apparently this is common with sulfur-sanitized ciders. I used a champagne yeast which should result in an interesting and super dry cider.

Primary fermentation seems to have died down after a week. Now it just sits for 3 more weeks. I'll rack into a secondary next week.

I plan on bottling and carbonating with corn sugar.

Fermentation Start Date: 9/26/2009
Planned Fermentation End Date: 10/24/2009
Starting Gravity: ???
Projected Ending Gravity: 1.000

Recipe reprinted here from Mahalo.com:

Sulfur-Sanitized Hard Cider

Ingredients

• 1 gallon unpasteurized, unfiltered apple juice—a mixture of several varieties of both tart and sweet apples is recommended
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon pectic enzyme—eliminates "haziness" in the cider.
• 1/2 teaspoon yeast energizer
• 1 Campden tablet
• 1 packet cider, brewers, champagne or wine yeast
• 1/4 teaspoon tannin (optional)
• 1 teaspoon acid blend (optional)

Procedure

1. Crush the Campden tablet and stir it into the fresh apple juice in your fermenting pail.
2. Stir in the pectic enzyme, yeast energizer, sugar, tannin and acid blend. Do not add the yeast yet.
3. Cover the fermenting pail and let sit for one or two days.
4. Uncover the pail and sprinkle the yeast over the juice.
5. Put the lid back on the pail and attach the airlock (or rubber hosing and water assembly).
6. Allow the cider to ferment. The airlock will bubble, indicating that the cider is indeed fermenting. Wait for the bubbles to subside to a rate of about one bubble per minute, then wait 7 more days before moving on to the next step.
7. Siphon the cider into a second fermentation pail. Try to avoid transferring the sediment from the bottom of the first container into the second. Cover the container and attach the airlock.
8. Allow the fermentation to finish. Leener's suggests tasting the cider after two weeks and adjusting the flavor before allowing the fermentation to continue. This will take at least a few weeks. When the cider becomes clear, it's ready for drinking, carbonation or bottling.

UPDATE - 11/9/09

This turned out pretty good. I bottled about 3 weeks ago and tried after the first week. It still had a hint of apple at that time, but the apple has since dissipated. It's now like an extremely dry apple wine. The carb drops didn't really work. The bottles that had them will sparkle a little bit if opened at room temperature, but not when chilled. If I wanted to have sparking cider next time I'll use corn sugar.

I bought more cider for the next batch. I'm thinking that I'll sanitize by heating to 170 degrees (to keep the pectins from setting) and mull this batch with cinnamon, allspice, and cloves then stabilize after fermentation and backsweeten with apple juice.

This is one of the last carbonated bottles, at room temperature. It actually sparkled a lot, which is what prompted me to take the picture.