Easy Apple Cider

This recipe does vary from my first recipe that I posted. It is not a lot different, but it is very simple, and delicious. I've made many apple ciders over the last year, and this one is really fool-proof, so give it a whirl.

Recipe:
1 gallon fresh-pressed apple cider
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp tannins
champagne yeast

That's all! You can mix it all together in your sanitized fermenter (with juice at room temp) and let it go! That's all you need to do! It tastes just wonderful. Remember: the better the quality of your juice, the better the cider will come out, but also remember that it's pretty hard to mess up hard cider. If you use good yeast and good juice, you'll get a consistently good cider!


Tips:

Pectic Enzyme: I use this stuff every time. It breaks down the pectin in your apple cider/wine that makes it hazy. Without using it, your cider will probably take a very long time to clear. You also run the risk that it will never clear. Cider with a pectin haze tastes just as good, it's just not quite as pretty. Use it at a rate of 1 tsp. per gallon, and let it sit in your cider overnight before adding any other ingredients.

Yeast: Although pasteur champagne is not actually a champagne yeast, it makes a wonderful, nutty cider. Another amazing cider yeast is Côtes des Blancs, which gives a nice fruity flavor and aroma to your cider.

Tannins: To maximize the potential of your tannins, follow the following link for an easy method for getting tannins into your cider: Tannin Tip.

Oaking chips: Oak barrels can add an amazing, complex character to your apple cider, unfortunately they cost a small fortune. An affordable alternative is oaking chips, these are toasted French or American oak that can be bought in small quantities very cheaply (about one dollar per ounce usually). An ounce or three-quarters of an ounce are easily enough to oak one gallon of cider, and three ounces, given enough time (seven months give or take a few) will be enough to oak about five gallons.

At present I am fermenting ten gallons of apple cider. Half of it i will Oak for eight months, and half of it I will bottle and we will enjoy throughout this winter and next spring or even next summer depending on how long it lasts. I know that nine months or a year is a long time to wait for your cider or wine or mead, which is why I try to make a big enough batch that I can sample a bottle every few months, AND have some left once it has "come of age". This is also a great way to come to realize just how much your wine changes between bottling and its first birthday. It is really a lot of fun. So, quick, before autumn is over, get out there and make some apple cider!

Related Recipes: meddyglyn, light mead, medium mead, sweet mead, pear cider

Meddyglyn

Meddyglyn or metheglin is a type of mead of Welsh origin. It takes your basic mead and adds any number of various herbs and spices to produce a cheery drink that goes down smooth. It can definitely be enjoyed any time of the year, but makes an especially nice holiday drink. The amount of honey in the recipe can be 2.2 lbs per gallon; 3 lbs per gallon, or 5 lbs per gallon for a sweeter meddyglyn. This corresponds to the "light mead" and "medium mead" recipes on the site already, and the 5 lb corresponds to a strong, sweet mead.





Honey
Water to one gallon
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1/4 Tsp. tannins
orange peel
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp. whole or course ground nutmeg
2 cloves
1/4 vanilla bean





Add honey and water to a pot. Heat over low heat until the honey is dissolved. Then bring to a swift boil. Foam will come to the top. Scoop off as much of the foam as possible (this keeps sediment out of the bottles later on). Cool the mixture to about 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Add in nutrient and tannins. Place the mixture into the primary fermenter, add the yeast.

After about two weeks or when the fermentation seems to stop, rack to secondary fermenter if you're using one, if not go the the next step.

Boil a small saucepan of water. Cut the orange peel up into slices, and boil for five minutes. This gets rid of bitterness. If you have any concerns about bacteria on the vanilla bean or cinnamon stick, you can also boil these for a few minutes with the orange peel. Remove from water with tongs, and add directly to the fermenter. Also add in the other spices. Allow to steep in the mead, which is now becoming meddyglyn. I let mine sit for ten days to two weeks before removing the cinnamon and orange peel, but you can play with this. The longer it sits, the more pronounced the flavor of the spices.

Bottle and enjoy!

Note: Any of the spices can be optional, but I would NOT skip the orange peel, the cinnamon stick, or the nutmeg, but that's my personal taste. This is an awesome recipe to play around with.

Related Recipes: light mead, medium mead, sweet mead, apple cider, pear cider

Light Mead

Ramble: This incredibly simple recipe is for a very nice, light, dry mead. I've recently made a batch, and it came out wonderfully! It is truly spectacular, I like it much better than the medium mead, which I also like a lot! It has a very refreshing taste that would make it a perfect summer drink, and the one that i made has a nutty finish and a bit of warming quality that simultaneously make it an ideal fall or winter drink, a quality I often find that adding the tannins brings out. Here goes:



Recipe:

about 2.2 lbs. wildflower honey
1/4 tsp. tannins
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
wine yeast (recommending red star pasteur champagne or lalvin K1-V1116, or red star côtes des blancs)



Add honey to a stockpot, bring to 1 gallon with water. Warm over low heat until all honey is dissolved. Bring to a swift boil. This will bring a foam to the top of the mixture, scoop off as much of this foam as possible. This step helps your mead to clear very nicely, but also to ensure that sediment doesn't form over time on the bottom of your bottled mead, as happens without this step. If you would rather skip the boiling step, that's an option, and no harm is done.

Allow the mixture to come down to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (about 26 degrees Celsius), but not below sixty degrees. Add in your yeast nutrient (I wouldn't recommend skipping this step if you can avoid it, because honey does not supply a lot of the nutrients that the yeast require, and as we all know, happy yeast make happy wine). Add in your tannins (for a nifty trick to get your tannins into the must better, check out the post "Tannin Tip"). Rack to primary fermenter, then add your yeast. Personally, i used pasteur champagne, which is not actually a champagne base yeast, and it was wonderful. Though it is not a champagne yeast, I like some carbonation in my mead, and this did the trick beautifully. Apply airlock and allow to ferment.

Tips:
Fermentation will likely last at least ten days, but give plenty of time, especially if fermenting below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Bottle and cork for a flat mead!

For a sparkling mead (which I prefer), add about one and a half teaspoons of sugar to each 750mL bottle before filling, then fill and cork! I would store these in a bucket or bin with a lid on top until certain that all carbonation has ceased. Though I only ever had a problem once with corks popping (when i first started making wine and added way too much sugar to some apple cider), it is better to be safe than sorry and a bucket or bin makes for easy clean up! With this amount of sugar (1.5 tsp.) I have never had a problem! Enjoy!

Related Recipes: meddyglyn, medium mead, sweet mead, apple cider, pear cider

Apple Cider

I have these three aunts that make loads of hard apple cider every fall and age it in oak barrels. No, they're not shut ins. No, they don't live together! No, they're not witches! Well, I don't know what they do, but their cider is incredible, a local delicacy. You don't have to age your cider in oak barrels, or even press the apples yourself, though, so here's the gist of it:


1 gallon apple juice (from 15-17 lbs of Apples)
1 c. sugar
1/2 c lemon juice
1 campden tablet
1 tsp yeast nutrients
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
1 sachet champagne yeast


Combing apple and lemon juice, sugar, nutrients, pectic enzyme, and campden tablet. Mix, and allow to sit overnight to kill off wild yeasts. The next day, add in champagne yeast and top with an airlock. Champagne yeast ferments a little slower than other yeasts. After 15-20 days the mixture should stop fermenting. Transfer to secondary fermentor and store for one month or more before bottling. Age one year if possible, but if you can't, give it a try!

Tips:
1.)Apples are high in pectin, your wine might take a long time to clear or not clear at all without pectinase.
2.)Pressing your own apples is super easy if you have a fruit press (can also be used for grapes etc.), but can be more difficult if you don't. In a few months I'll post showing how a press works, and give you all the details. A better option is to use organic/natural apple cider from your supermarket (make sure there's no sodium benzoate or sulfur compounds). The even better option is to go to your local orchard and pick up some unpasteurized apple cider they've pressed and use that. If they pasteurize, that's okay, but cold pasteurization is better: this is where they shine an ultraviolet light through the cider to kill bacteria, and it doesn't change the flavor at all.