Some friends of mine have some apples on their tree so I suggested having a go at making some cider for them. As a backup I have also put on a turbo cider to make sure there is something to drink!
18th August 2012
Picked a bucket of apples from said apple tree. The apples were fairly bitter in taste and sharp rather than sweet. Not sure what that means for the resultant cider but we will see.
Processing them was fairly time consuming. Using the food processor to bash them up and then using a muslin to wring out the fluid that couldn't be strained out.
In the end, the measuring somewhat inaccurately we produced about 2L of Apple juice.
Next time I do this I would definitely want to build some sort of home made fruit press as we didn't get all that much juice out and it was a lot of effort for the juice we did get.
I put in a whole campden tablet to the juice to ensure it was thoroughly sterilised before I add the yeast.
20th August 2012
Now adding the yeast, and starting a second Turbo Cider just in case the first one doesn't work out.
Yeast was added 2/3rds to the turbo cider, 1/3 to the real juice cider.
Ingredients
- 4 litres of Apple juice (from concentrate)
- Youngs Cider Yeast
Original Gravity: 1.042
Yep, it is a pretty basic cider recipe. I could have added extra sugar but I didn't feel want to make something too strong for a refreshing summery drink.
21st August 2012
The Turbo Cider as expected has started nicely and has developed a good foam. The real juice cider doesn't appear to be doing very much at the moment.
22nd August 2012
The real juice cider had definitely not started fermenting. There was no visible activity (bubbles, foam, airlock activity) so I decided to repitch some yeast. This time I made a starter of bakers yeast with sugary water.
Later that evening there was more activity from the airlock and slight bubbley patches forming on the surface.
23rd August 2012
The real juice cider is now most definitely fermenting with lots of activity. Excellent, now we wait.
20th August 2012
Fermentation appears to have stopped for both ciders. I will give them both two weeks to mature and then bottle.
05th September 2012
Found some time to get this bottled. Tasted the turbo cider which was close to drinkable, a good cider flavour with a bit of zingyness which I figure will settle down once the cider has more time to mature.
No final gravity so ABV estimated at 6%
The real apple juice however fared less well. On tasting it, bitter, sharp and left a very sour taste in the mouth. Undrinkably sour... I suspect that is an infected batch or that the apples were not suitable for making cider with. Down the sink with ye foul smelling brew!
So, with that established I got the turbo cider primed with 40g of sugar and bottled ready for labelling.
19th September 2012
For the label design I decided on something humorously classic for what is a very simple cider.
I've decided to include a QR Code which links to this page as a nice link between what you are drinking and how it was made.
20th September 2012
Bottled and ready to drink.
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