A-Cup Cider ver. 00
Intro
The first batch was primarily made from nonpasturized apple juice with about a cup of juiced apples.
Ingredients
- 14 Cups of nonpasturized apple juice
- 6 Organic granny smith apples
- 2 Organic gravenstein apples
Method
It's a simple hard cider that should end up flat, but sweet!
1) Cleaning and sanitizing equipment: Thanks to the camden tablets this isn't super necessary, in some ways cider is much more forgiving then beer. Everything was washed but sanitizer was not used
2) Washed our apples, cored them, and chopped them into smaller chunks to fit in the blender (had to split into two batches). Poured in a cup of apple juice per blended batch, blended 'em, duh
3) Gently strained out the juice from the pulp (8 apples produced 1 cup of juice + 2 cups of store bought apple juice), combined with the remaining 12 cups of store bought juice, and poured it into the glass jug.
4) Crushed 1 camden tablet in a ziplock bag using two spoons, poured into the glass jug, plugged it with the carboy bung and waterlock (just used water to fill it, not sanitizer or vodka)
5) Waited 24 hrs before pitching Danstar ...(dang just realized I pitched WAAAAAY too much yeast *facedesk*) Windsor Ale Yeast, waited 20-30 mins and gently shook the jug
6) Covered, put in a nice cool swamp cooler, fermenting for 2 weeks (should be around 65, unfortunately has probably been averaging 68-70)
7) Racked (with slight difficulty) into another sanitized carboy to separate the cider from all the dead yeast(!) and capped. Will chill in Yardena's fridge until she gets sick of it, then maybe another 2 months in my fridge.
8) Drink! Kanpai!
Lessons Learned
- Don't pitch DOUBLE the amount of yeast that you're supposed to (possible fix: rack into a different container to separate out all the dead yeast, and let it rest to hopefully mellow out and lose some of the off flavors incurred by the rapid fermentation (a result of the somewhat high temp fermentation and the total overkill of yeast).