Apple Cider - First Attempt

I'd have moved on to try a second recipe sooner but I got a bad sinus infection and I didn't want to be anywhere near anything sweet or alcohol related. But, on the plus side, I found a very basic apple cider recipe that I thought I would try.

Tea:
13 cups apple juice (I used Motts 100% juice for this attempt)
1/4 tsp yeast nutrient

Process:
As this was store bought juice and already pasteurized, there was no need to boil. I poured the juice directly into the fermenter and stirred in the yeast nutrient. I then added just under 1/2 tsp Red Star Champagne yeast, pitched with about 1/8 cup of water heated to between 80-90F. This is a deviation from the original recipe as it called for Red Star Montrachet yeast. The Champagne yeast will almost certainly produce a drier product but I wanted to use up the open packet and the ginger beer taught me that drier isn't necessarily a bad thing. We'll see how it develops.

The original gravity of the mixture is 1.048 and it has been stored in the basement for two days now. At the end of the week, I will transfer to a secondary fermenter and add additional flavoring in the form of cinnamon and nutmeg. The mixture will sit for another week and then back-sweetening will be done with the remaining 3 cups of juice.

Transfer:
After one week I siphoned out the cider into a new bucket, separating the liquid from the lees. To this, I added 1/4 cup of water that I had boiled with 1 cinnamon stick and some grated nutmeg. I simmered the water for about 5 minutes and then cooled it down before adding it to the cider.

I also added an additional 1/4 tsp of yeast nutrient in case the yeast was tiring out. I was a bit worried as I had never seen bubbling from the lock, although I did know that gas was being produced as it surged when I put any pressure on the lid. It appears that I just had enough head space to hold the excess gas. This gas did have a bit of an odor to it although I did not detect any foul taste when I took a sample of the mixture so I am not worried about the smell.

I took a gravity mixture of the cider and it had bottomed out to 1.000, so it was just under 5% at that point. With everything mixed, I put the lid back on and put it back in the basement for another week.

Backsweetening and Bottling

After an additional week, I pulled the bucket out of the basement. The gravity had dropped only a tiny bit to 0.999, keeping the mixture at about 5% alcohol. It is important to note that because of the less rigorous activity, there was no significant odor that I could detect.

I added the remaining 3 cups of apple juice to the bottling bucket and then siphoned the cider into the bottling bucket, leaving the cinnamon stick and any lees behind. I gave it a bit of a gentle stir and then took a second gravity reading. It came out as 1.010 so the addition of the juice dropped the mixture to 4%, although until pasteurization takes place, the yeast is likely to keep working so the final product may be a little higher.

The final product was then bottled in 9 glass bottles and one plastic test bottle. Once the plastic bottle becomes hard, I'll pasteurize to kill off the yeast and stop the carbonation. I did take one sip after I added the juice and although the cinnamon and nutmeg came through, the mixture seemed a little watery to me. I'm hoping that was just the unsweetened juice not yet fully mixed with the matured liquid, but I won't be sure until the process is complete.

Pasteurization

The bottles aged for three full days. I pulled them up Wednesday night after the plastic bottle had gotten hard. This was only a day earlier than the recipe said would usually happen so I felt okay with that.

Pasteurization was pretty easy although my own natural caution may have lessened the effect. I don't have a deep lobster pot so I used a regular stew pot. I also was very nervous about over heating the water and since I don't have a candy thermometer, I was using my beer thermometer for a time by time test. So instead of pasteurizing for 10 minutes at 180F, I put the bottles in at a little less than 150F and left them there for 20 minutes, which is an acceptable alternative. To be extra safe, once they had been out of the bath for a good while, I put them in the fridge for a bit of a cold crash.

Results

I had the plastic bottle one on Friday and I think the results were pretty good for a first pass. The cider is less sweet than I've had with some commercial brands, but it was not dry like the ginger beer. The apple was hazy in the background while the cinnamon stood out, but not in an overpowering way. In fact, I think it could handle some additional spices, but I want to withhold final judgment on that until I've had a bottle that has aged a bit more. The best thing was that the more I had, the more I found myself enjoying the flavor and I was genuinely disappointed when I had finished the mug.

I'll withhold planned changes until I've drunk the aged stuff, but my first thought is to add some vanilla. Also perhaps some allspice to round out the autumn profile.