I can’t find any good freshly pressed natural cider around to ferment, and I’m under spousal pressure to deliver.
So I’m considering an apple juice, like the local grocery store variety, just to get a batch going. The only ingredients listed on the back are apple juice from concentrate, apple juice and ascorbic acid (vitamin c). No preservatives.
I’m not wild about the idea compared to fresh cider, but why not. Any reason not to give it a shot, or ideas to make it better? I’m thinking about going with simple Safe Ale US-05.
I make a cider for my wife (that won a gold medal in a comp I sent it to last year) using Tree Top 3-apple blend. It’s just 5 gallons of Tree Top 3 apple blend and a vial of White Labs English Cider yeast (WLP775). Let it ferment for 2-3 weeks, then let it age for 3-6 months and it turns out great.
Try what I did . Since wild apples aren’t in season yet, I bought 20# of Fujis at Safeway and shredded them in my mini apple grinder. Or just use a blender or food processor. Press the pomace and use that fresh juice. I don’t use commercial yeasts. Just put the juice in bottles with narrow necks and let it sit on the counter. Starts fizzing in 24 hrs. I top off with either fresh juice or small spoonfuls of sugar to keep the fermentation going for 6 weeks or so. Then I decant it off the yeast sludge in the bottom. It’s very clear, dry and still. Still has nice apple flavor. Could try adding sugar or simple syrup right at the start and use a fermentation lock to keep out flies if you’re more fastidious than scrumpy makers are. Comes out around 9-10% ethanol which is quite quaffable. I have made about 35 gallons of scrumpy this year and will make lots more using locally collected wild pioneer apples next season. BandonScrumpy.com
So my wife has the same ‘demands’ since she isn’t a fan of my beers. She is a fan of sweet woodchuck like ciders. Since I think of woodchuck as a cheap version of cider, I decided to make a cheap version and see what came out. Went to Walmart and got 6 of the largest jugs (128 oz?) of great value apple juice (it is fermentable) and 4 cans of G.V. frozen juice concentrate. Warm up 1 container of the concentrate. Dump that can and the 6 jugs of well shaken juice into a carboy and ferment with champagne yeast at wine ferm. temps. Since it was winter, once fermentation was done (finished at ~1.001 6%), I placed the carboy outside to crash cool for a few days until it cleared up. I keg so I warmed up the remaining 3 cans of concentrate, dumped those in the keg and racked the nature chilled carboy on top and carbed. It came out about as sweet as the chuck cider and it kept my wife happy. For like $25.
My Fuji cider till fizzing away. Today I made two gallons if all Braeburn and increased the Sg to 1.102 with some sugar. It’s very dark. Don’t know if that will translate to more robust flavor. It’s kind of fun to not know for certain what the result will be. Still don’t add commercial yeast or sulfur. I drink it too fast to go bad.
