Anyone starting some ciders? My crop was bad this year so I had to buy. Went to the cider mill today and bought 3 gallons untreated. I was charged the same as UV pasteurised. Should have gotten the pasteurized I guess and I could have skipped the Campden. Anyway going to mix it with another gallon of store apple juice and a gallon of cranberry juice. What are you all making?
I’m probably doing another batch. Nothing fancy, just store bought. Last year, I aged a batch on light French oak for two weeks. I might do the same, just a little longer this time. Last year’s is tasting pretty great this year.
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I have some oak chips. How did you do it?
I just tossed in a star-sanned oak spiral after active fermentation, then racked it off after two more weeks. I ferment to dry and carbonate for a sparkling cider, so the rest was easy peasy. I’d read that oak can be overwhelming, which is why I just went with one spiral for two weeks, but I could do with more.
I’ve thought about doing 10gals this year. Making 4gals regular, 3gals oaked, and 3gals dry hopped with probably Citra.
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There is a cidery around that does a dry hopped with citra version…pretty darn good.
I made 10 gallons last year and wasn’t enough. I’m not a big cider drinker myself but a lot of people
That visit do enjoy them and heck they are fun to Make
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Picked up a total of 5.5G of fresh orchard cider SG1.054. Kmeta and pectinased it over the past 2 days. Tonight, siphoned off 1G to start a regular cider using Redstar Cote de Blanc. Tomorrow will do a Graf with the rest, using s-04.
I have not yet decided what I’ll be doing for this season. A few gallons of plain unadulterated cider for sure, and maybe that’s it. I still have a lot of cyser from last year.
It’s still too early here to do anything yet anyway. The apples are all tiny this year. My own trees only have literally a handful left on all 3 trees due to puppy attack. Need to fence them off before next season.
Hope you all have successful ciders this year.
I have been waiting to do apples here. We had a small crop of honey crisp, that actually are great eating, so us and them damn crows have been working on thinning out the bunch. I have friends that have quite a few trees and will be gathering next W/E. I will try to find another juicer and have more help. Its a slow process, but from what yer responses last year was, it gets more juice out. Sneezles61
Has anyone used this? Natural select Apple, It comes in other fruits also. It is set up for wine @ 22brix. I figure I can dilute it down to about 1050 to start.
I have not but you can dilute down and end up with about twice as much cider.
If after I ferment cider and I want to sweeten a bit could I just add some of the cider the grocery store sells that has the potassium sorbate in it.
I’d suspect that the sorbate would be too dilute to be effective, but probably not a big deal if you’re kegging it.
