OOPS

Quit brewing over the summer, too hot, and made a plethora of mistakes on the first batch of the year. Thank God for mistakes. This year’s Cider is by far the best. After lots of experimentation last year, and some awesome results, the goal at the start of the year was to make a very well balanced hard cider that was extremely drinkable. Lots of study and research went in to try and figure out what was usually missing to make our Cider better than good but great, and still inexpensive to make.

Keeping to a base of store bought apple cider/juice using the consistent and inexpensive crystal clear store brand apple cider from concentrate was essential. At around $3.59 a gallon it’s a good place to start. Cider made from this is good, and can be made very strong, but is a bit bland flavor wise. Research showed that it is mostly made of sweet table apples, and has none of the tartness that gives hard cider it’s body, and flavor. Most good hard ciders are made from a blend of sweet and tart. In general 2 parts sweet apples to one part tart apples. So to punch up the flavor a bit and still keep the price down, we started adding Natures Flavors Green Apple Natural Flavor Extract. Following the recommendation on line and on the bottle we added a ¼ tsp for each gallon. It helped some but the flavor still wasn’t up to snuff, and we were finding that the easy to drink but very strong (18% alcohol) cider made using Champagne yeast had the effect of making it too strong and getting drunk isn’t the goal. Its smoothness and high alcohol content surprised a few friends.

As an accident the first batch of the year didn’t start off well, no bubbling after 24 hours, so we added another package of yeast hoping to salvage 5 gallons of juice. We added Ale yeast not more Champagne yeast. I had miss-read the old recipe and added about ¼ oz. not ¼ tsp. of Natures Flavors Green Apple Natural Flavor Extract per gallon, and accidentally got snookered into a 4lb not 5lb bag of sugar. 12 days later we bottled 5 gallons of the best stuff we ever brewed. The combination of yeast produced a 10% alcohol sweet beverage with just enough green apple tart to make it fantastic. As mentioned earlier we used that same yeast cake to make 20 gallons of consistent and wonderful cider, by just adding the juice, sugar, and extract to keep it going.

Here’s my new favorite hard cider ingredient list to make 5 gallons of cider.

4 lbs table sugar
1oz. Natures Flavors Green Apple Natural Flavor Extract.
1 Package Champagne yeast
1 Package Ale yeast
5 gallons of store brand apple juice/cider (you’ll have about a quart or so left over if you’re using a 5 gallon carboy)