Brewing Cider

[MatthewJ]

Hello all,

I'm fairly new to home brewing and I have only ever brewed cider once, which was from a kit. I am now looking for a recipe/some advice on brewing cider from apples that have been sprayed with pesticides. My dad runs a greengrocery business and is also, alike me, fond of cider, and so I have a vast quantity of apples at my disposal. I have looked at numerous recipes for cider and seen that generally it is recommended that a mixture of eating, cooking and crab apples should be used. I haven't any crab apples, but I can get a wide variety of eating apples and also some cooking apples. I have an eating apple tree, which generally yields an impressive crop. I would like to get this crop involved in time, but for the moment I would like to brew some of my dad's apples as they are available now. I would be very grateful of any advice offered.

Thanks,

Matthew

 

[trunky]

I have done a several batches of cider over the years and I suggest you simply have a go. There are ideal pH, sugar and other requirements of the juice that would make an ideal cider, but don't let that worry you too much.

From what I have gathered it would seem wise to combine 3 parts of eating apples with 1 part cooking apple. Eating apples vary a lot, my latest Jonagold juice came in at 1.072 whilst the previous (mainly) Braeburn juice came in at 1.055.

As ever, wash the apples throughly in lukewarm water to remove the wax from the skin then pulp and press. If you see any scum form simply remove it.

I have allways treated the juice with sulphite and left it 24 hours before pitching a cider/champagne yeast. A slow (cool) ferment is best.

Hints and tips - allways add a quarter to one third of a teaspoon of tannin per gallon of juice - this will make up for the lack of cider apples. Measure the pH and adjust if required. Raise the OG to at least 1.055 using sugar if needed.

The ferment cool and long, we are looking at several months here.

I see 1kg of apples as 1pint of cider, you may be lucky and get more!

 

[MatthewJ]

Thank you very much for the reply. When you say to treat the juice with sulphite, how should I do that? Sorry, I really am a novice. Roughly what temperature should a cool and long fermentation be at, are we talking room temperature here, or is this something I should leave in the shed? And is that for the initial fermentation? Or after I have bottled it?

Thanks again,

Matthew

 

[trunky]

One camden tablet crushed in one gallon of juice should be about right.