Making Cider with only cooking apples?

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gingerbiscuit

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Hi, I've made myself a press, collected loads of apples, got some dimijohns, airlocks, champagne yeast, and some sterilising powder to mix and clean equipment.

I'm good to go.

Except, I have a vast majority of cooking apples.
What results should I expect? A very bitter dry cider?
Perhaps I can add some sugar at the beginning?

Either way,
My plan is to juice into clean demijohns, add some yeast (and maybe sugar?) then bung in the airlocks.

Wait until my hydrometer tells me to bottle the cider. Then bottle it.
Maybe adding half a tea spoon of sugar to each bottle before I put on the cap?
Anything I'm missing?

Thanks for providing this resource guys.
 
It all sounds good to me, not sure about just using cookers though,if it was me i would get a good mix of apples, im going to have ago a 5gallons of cider with a nebourie next weekend as we have 200+ pound of mixed apples to pick up. Im sure if im wrong somebody will point you and me in the right direction.

:cheers:

Rich
 
200lb, you should get a bit more than 5 gallons out of that lot, I'd say sqeezing by hand you should get 20 gallons and more with a press.

That or you take 10 gallons and boil it down to 5 to get a double strength Cider.

I know bad idea falling over juice :drunk: , but must be worth a go one day.
 
This brew will probably end up very acidic,Ive been lead to believe you need more desert apples than cookers to make a balanced brew.


Cheers Graham.
 
It's pretty essential to get your acid level right at the outset.
Low acid can be adjusted by adding citric acid, but it's not so easy to strip acid out.
Precipitated chalk will only go so far, then you have to dilute with low acid juice (probably supermarket).
As Aleman said in another thread, pH testing is meaningless, you have to measure the acid content!
Richard's comment about a good mix of apples is sound advice.
 
So what's the problem with an acidic cider?

Will it cause problems for fermentation, or will it simply taste like vinegar.

Indecently, my girlfriend wants me to make her some cider vinegar, can I do this by just allowing a batch to get "contaminated" from the air?

Thanks again.
 
Believe me I've made extremely acidic cider my self, its so acidic your pallet wont tolerate it if it dose your your stomach won't, it will come back up in about two minuets.
I've got 5 gallons like this sat at home going to try to retrieve it with precipitated chalk,but in truth don't hold out much hope.
Try brewing this if you wan't to it mat turn out OK thou I doubt it. Pressing that many apples is very hard work I just don't want you to be disappointed.
If you haven't got desert apples to mix with your cookers try mixing some apple juice from desert apples from your local farm shop. Apple juice from supermarket cheep juice is also acidic so don't use this to mix with cookers.

Best of luck Graham.
 
OK, so we've started juicing and the juice tastes AMAZING! Really sweet and not acidic tasting.

Is this anything to go by? Or will they become more acidic overtime? (I'm no chemist)

If I mix with eating apple juice at a later date is this OK?

Thanks dudes.
 
if it tastes quite nice it should be fine can u take a hydromter reading and add shugar acordingly im no expert i have some on the go but mine tasted very sharp maybe it neads more time good luck :cheers:
 
that sounds good to me not shure if u should add shugar if it tastes nice but have a look at this u can allway add some honey or shugar later lets no how u get on :thumb:

Add 2.25 ounces (67.5 grams) of sugar to raise the specific gravity of one gallon of juice by 5 points (for example from 1.035 to 1.040).

dessert apples will have a specific gravity between 1.040 and 1.050 and if allowed to ferment fully, will result in a hard cider with around 5.5 to 6.5 percent alcohol content.
 
phoenix68 said:
Apple juice from supermarket cheep juice is also acidic so don't use this to mix with cookers.
I make a lot of cider from supermarket apple juice and it generallky measures at 0.4% sulphuric or 4ppt.
This makes it very suitable for reducining acidity in over acid juices.
 
I'm picking up some eating apples tomorrow, I'm going to add their juice to my demijohns that are currently 3/4 full with cooking apple juice (that is very sweet anyway - and already combined with champagne yeast)

Sound good?
 
I've found that even 50% cooker juice is far too acidic.

33% cookers juice with 67% eaters juices is the blend I use all the time.

It it's a poor year for apples I supplement with carton apple juice (which I've done this year as my apple blossom was caught by that late frost in May) using such stuff such as those 1.5 litre cartons of Vitafit that were on offer at Lidl as the same time as there were £5 off a £30 spend at Lidl vouchers about, getting the cost down to 28p/litre.

But when using that carton juice I've found the best mix to be 25% cookers, 25% sweet eaters (not 'dual purpose' apples) and 50% carton juice.
 
Davids % figureses are about the same as my own experienceses and every thing I've read elsewhere stick with this and you won't go far wrong.

Cheers Graham.
 

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