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.