Cider Tasting and Recap of Process

First, my apologies for taking two years to finish this topic.

I started this cider journey November 2012.

After pressing 2 gallons of juice from Golden Delicious apples I added a campden tablet to one and champagne yeast to the other. The next day I added champagne yeast to the campden treated juice.

It took three weeks to fully ferment. It was clear, had little to no bubbles rising and lots of sediment in the bottom.

I used a food grade silicone tube and got a siphon going with the cider to remove it from the sediment on the bottom. Then I used more fresh pressed apple juice to backsweeten and to get a second fermentation going. This provided more apple flavor and carbonation. I think I added about 1 cup of apple juice for every three cups of hard cider.

I checked it daily and once the cider was carbonated to my liking, I 'bottle pasteurized' it using a method perfected by "Pappers" and explained on a homebrewtalk.com forum. This was fairly simple and was achieved by heating water to 180 fahrenheit in my canner. I carefully added the bottles and let them sit in the hot water for 10 min off the heat. Then I removed the bottles from the water and allowed them to cool slowly on my counter top. This made them shelf stable and we stored them in the pantry.

Two weeks later, when we were with family for the holidays, we opened the cider to try it out. It was absolutely fantastic. It turned out just how I wanted it to taste and I was thrilled with the carbonation. My whole family enjoyed it and I will definitely make it again.

Cleaning bottles

I bought the bottle brush in the home brew section. It was $5.99. It's a big beefy thing that is really for cleaning carboys. The day I needed to clean my flip top bottles I found that it didn't fit down the neck. Grrr. So, I took it out to the garage and smashed it with a mallet. Ha! Well, it did modify the width somewhat but I really had to fight to get it down the mouth of the bottles I needed to clean. But, fight I did, because that's who I am. Stubborn. And, really, it was only like 8 bottles or so.

Anyway, while at the homebrew store again, this time to get two more 16 ounce flip top bottles. (I absolutely love these things! I must stock up next garage sale season.) I went to the housecleaning isle to find a better bottle brush. Hubby had brought one home for me already but the handle was too thick to allow it to fit all the way down. Grrr. (No, I didn't smash this one, too.) Well, they didn't have skinny handled ones either. What I did find was a dryer vent brush. It was nice and long and skinny! I decided I would just bend the end up so it would work like a bottle brush. Incidentally it was the same cost as the carboy cleaner. Here it is with my modifications.

 Here it is next to the white carboy brush.

And a closeup to show how I bent up the end. It was super easy. I just used needle nosed pliers.

Pasteurizing

Last night I opened one of my 32 ounce bottles and had to hold the cap on lightly to keep it from overflowing. I put it in the fridge to stop the yeast from multiplying and today I am pasteurizing it.
It had some sediment on the bottom so I racked it off into two 16 ounce bottles.

I think this was a good thing to do for two reasons. First, racking it off will prevent any flavor change that the cider will take on from sitting on it's lees. I did it because the amount of sediment was pretty thick (about a 1/4" or so). I had used fresh pressed apple juice to back sweeten it and this particular bottle got the last of the jug which had sediment in the bottom. It was the bottle that carbed up the fastest, too. So, I think it had quite a bit of natural yeast in that was activated as well. The second reason, was that the bottle from the fridge was cold and I thought it might break if I put it in the 190 degree water. I warmed up the two 16 ounce bottles with hot water before racking the cold cider into them.

Below is a photo of the cider in the 32 ounce bottle (in the foreground) before I racked it off.

I am also running a test on how long it takes the 32 ounce bottle to reach 140 F. I had read this post on HomeBrewTalk which advises this.

I have three bottles in my pressure canner right now. I am only using the pressure canner because it provides a cautionary measure against bottle bombs. I took out the pressure dial so steam can escape. It also gives me a little porthole to view the thermometer in the 32 ounce bottle I have in there. The other two bottles are the 16 ounce ones with the cider.

None of my other bottles of cider are carbonated enough yet. There are two more bottles that I back sweetened with fresh cider and three with honey.

So, I just checked the temp and it has been 7 min. It is up to 178 now. Shoot, I missed the 140 mark. Sorry, now I don't have results to share on how long it took to get there.

I think I will wait the remaining three minutes before I take the bottles out. (10 minutes is the recommended time by Pappers of the HomeBrewTalk forum whose method I am following.)

Now the bottles are out and I checked the temp of the 32 ounce bottle again. It is holding at 178.

Here's the finished product.

Bottling

I finally got this cider into bottles. I decided to "backsweeten". I did keep some pure but in the other bottles I experimented with honey (just to taste) and fresh local pressed cider from Orondo Cider Works ($5 for a half gallon). It has no preservatives and is just UV treated.

The hardest part about bottling was swirling the cider carefully to mix the honey but not to splash it and introduce oxygen.

My plan is to open them every day to check how well they are carbing up. This will happen because the yeast will activate with the addition of sugar and produce carbon dioxide. At the point that I like them I can bottle pasteurize them to stop the yeast.

Here's a photo showing how much hard cider I filled them with before adding the juice.

From left to right: campden treated still cider (nothing added), no campden still cider, honey sweetened and honey sweetened (both of the last ones also were from the "no campden" batch).

Here's a close up of the two still ciders. On the left is the one from the batch treated with campden tablets. I just wanted to see if I could taste a difference or not.

I am going to check with the people on Home Brew Talk to see what they think about bottle pasteurizing in these bottles.

I'm actually really relieved to have this bottled up. I think it was worrying me having so much headspace after I had first racked it.

Well, I'll get back to you once I have some results from tasting.

Racking Time

I racked it off it's lees yesterday afternoon. I have way too much headspace to leave it for long (too much oxygen exposure).

I need to bottle it. I think I'm going to add some fresh pressed apple juice. That way the yeast will have something to eat and produce carbonation. I know I need to be careful not to make bottle bombs so I'm going to use a plastic bottle or a swing cap bottle and check it often. Once it reaches the carbonation I want, I'll bottle pasteurize it using this method.

I found a great website yesterday for measurements and advice for one gallon batches. I've found that most recipes and advice is for five gallon batches.

I tasted each brew again, too. I can't tell the difference between the two. Both are very dry and a little harsh. I've read that they'll mellow with age and the apple flavors will come forward somewhat. I plan on keeping a little "pure" (not add any juice to it) to see how I like it in a few months.

I did try an unfiltered cider that just had some honey added. It's called Honey Crisp by Crispin. It was very good. Maybe I should do a little with honey, too.

Well, that's all for now. I will update when I/we have done some real taste testing.

Wild Fermentation

This was even more exciting than doing the apple cider with store bought yeast. I had extra juice and I decided I wanted to see if it would ferment on its own. I had also read this blog post from Delicious Obsessions.

Here is the first of the two quart jars I had. It is juice from a pressing that took 2 days to get enough juice. It had been refrigerated for a couple days prior to setting it out at room temp. I put clean cheesecloth over the jar and secured it with a rubber band. Then I worried that wasn't enough protection so I also covered it in plastic that I poked numerous holes in.

 This second quart is juice that was pressed the same day and left out at room temp from the beginning. I covered it with paper towel at first that was secured with a rubber band and then switched to cheesecloth (no plastic with holes this time) when I got around to it.

Here they are a few days later. On the left is Batch 2. It is on Day 5. This was the first day I noticed any activity. It was bubbling and frothy on top. I tasted it and it was like slightly spikey apple juice. Yummy. Didn't taste like there was much alcohol in it at all.  On the right is Batch 1. The white layer you see is actually mould. It was on Day 8. There was no way to scoop it out as it was a solid film so I dumped it. It was not fermenting at all. 

So, now all that is left is Batch 2. I refrigerated it yesterday which was Day 18 for it. Here it is today on Day 19. In a separate post I have described another brew I have that I fermented with Champagne yeast that is also on Day 19 and it has cleared nicely. This one is definitely different. I'll have to taste them both and report. I love that it actually worked. I also found it very interesting that it did not work at all with the less than fresh cider in Batch 1.

UPDATE: Yesterday, Dec. 3rd (Day 19), I racked it off it's lees and left it out at room temp. I did this because when I tasted it I found it really sour. I had the thought of making apple cider vinegar earlier so I think I'll just let it go that route now.

Progress Report

First, I need to share the single biggest mistake I've made so far. I did not take an initial reading of the specific gravity of the juice I started with. Without that I'm pretty sure there is no way to tell what the alcohol content of my cider is. It's not that the reading is hard to take nor does it require expensive equipment.  You can buy a hydrometer at your local brew shop for about $10.00. It was simply a newbie mistake.

So, to get you caught up on where my cider is at now, I have three batches. The first pressing I did took two days on Nov. 9 and 10.  On Nov. 11 I put it into a 1 gallon glass jug and treated it with a campden tablet. On Nov. 12 I pitched the yeast. On November 13 I pressed another gallon of juice. For this batch I did not use a campden tablet because I wanted to see what a difference it made. For both gallons I used the champagne yeast I mentioned in a previous post. The third batch was an experimentation with wild yeast. I will post about that separately.

I did not add any sugar to anything. I just wanted pure fermented apple juice.

The following photo is Day 1 of the Untreated gallon.








Here are both the Treated and Untreated batches. On the right is the Treated on Day 3. The other is the Untreated Day 2.

The Treated one started fermenting quicker and seemed to finish quite ahead of the other. I had read that the campden tablets were really not necessary as the store-bought yeast was usually strong enough to overcome the wild yeast that is naturally present. I just wanted to see the difference. You may have noticed the color difference between the two. The Treated one was more orangey and the Untreated more brown.

Here are both batches again.  On the left is the Treated one on Day 4, and on the right is Untreated Day 3. You can see the sediment is greater on the Treated.

A closeup photo on Day 5 for the Untreated (on the right) and Day 6 for the Treated shows a layer of white sediment.  This was Nov. 17.  I tasted it and the untreated batch still tasted a little sweet and appley but I didn't stop fermentation there because I didn't think there'd be much point in drinking it if it didn't have much of a kick :)

Here are the two batches on Nov. 21. On the right is the Treated and on the left the Untreated. I tasted them both and couldn't tell a great deal of difference between the two. They tasted very dry, like wine. I don't know what percent of alcohol it has but it gave me a nice buzz. It sure would have been nice if I had taken that initial reading!

Today is December 1st, 2012 and the yeast seems to be dormant. I know I need to "rack" it off its lees into a second fermentation vessel or bottle it.  This means I carefully siphon it out of the initial fermentation vessel trying to introduce as little extra oxygen as possible and leaving behind all the exhausted yeast particles and sediment in the bottom. I believe you can leave it in the initial fermentation vessel for 3 weeks. If you leave it too long it will take on "off" flavors. I just have a couple days left until that deadline.

Here is Treated on the left on Day 20 and Untreated on Day 19.

So, I am at the point where I need to figure out how to regain that apple flavor and maybe get it carbonated. I joined the HomeBrewTalk forum so I could ask questions and post pictures to get advice. I haven't done that yet but it is a very informative and helpful website.