Apple Cherry Cider

This Recipe is in keeping with the theme to keep things simple and inexpensive and tasty. I noticed a frozen juice concentrate brand named Old Orchard, labeled 100% natural and no preservatives, the flavor was Apple Cherry. Sounded like a great base for a new Cider to me. I was right.

Instructions say each can makes 48 oz. that means to get make 5 gallons of cider you’ll need 13 and a third cans. I don’t know how to buy a 1/3 of a can so I used 15. At $1.47 each the cost of the juice concentrate is $22, I used my standard US05 ale yeast, $2.65, and 4 pounds of sugar $2 ( I buy 25lb bags). So total cost is less than $30 to make 5 gallons. Using juice concentrates causes a problem, they have to be diluted with water. Chlorine in your water will kill yeast and you’ll end up having trouble to start fermentation. The trick is to use un-chlorinated water. My water comes from a well and is naturally chlorine free. If your tap water is from the city, it contains chlorine. To remove the chlorine put 5 gallons in a carboy and set it in the sun for a few days, or get 5 gallons of “purified” water from your local store. Recipe makes 5+ gallons. 15 cans Old Orchard Apple Cherry frozen juice concentrate 4 pounds sugar 1 pkg US05 Ale Yeast 3.6 gallons Water Thaw your concentrate. Put about 2 gallons of water into your carboy or brewing bucket, add all concentrate, and sugar, then stir. Add remaining water to bring total volume to 5 gallons, pitch your yeast, and let it ferment for a week or so(until bubbling rate is down to 1 bubble every 8 to 10 seconds). Transfer to secondary fermentation container and let sit another week or two to let the yeast drop out then bottle. If you want it bubbly just bottle it without secondary and let it sit in a cool place for a few weeks. It’s a semi-dry cider with lots of aroma and flavor.

Stupid Simple, A Cider Tale

Here in Florida, unless you want a HUGE electric bill or own a brewing cooler, cider making stops in early May This year spring was cool and I was able to brew until almost Memorial Day. It is also cooler up here in Citrus county than last year so, Brewing Season has started.

A friend of mine who has taken a “shine” to my cider, and although he enjoys the explosion of commercial ciders now available wanted to make his own and asked for my help. I explained to him how easy it was and pointed him to the first entry of this blog. He kept hinting that he wanted help getting started, saying things like, “We need to do a brewing party at my house” and other subtle remarks like, “Why don’t you come over and help me get the first batch going.” I got the idea, he wanted help with the first go round. So I went over and we started the first batch of “Stupid Simple Swampy Cider”, It’s called that because his name is Swampy and like I keep tellin’ people,” makin’ cider is easy.”

So I hope on the motorcycle and ride down to the Swamp. Contrary to common belief the Swamp is not a football stadium in Gainesville but a nice ranch house in Pasco county with a new large deck out back. I bring the expensive stuff, a bubbler and rubber carboy stopper and a Package of US05 Ale yeast ($5 total). Swampy drives over to Publix gets the other necessities a 5-gallon blue plastic carboy of water,4#’s of Sugar 5 gallons of Publix all Natural apple juice and head back to the swamp.

So there was lot’s of talk about yeast pee and yeast farts and the need for fortification of the apple juice with sugar to provide an adequate yeast feast. Explaining that “Stupid Simple Swampy Cider” won’t be commercial 5%C2H5OH stuff, it will be the hardier 12-14% Alcohol brew. We get back, dump the water out of the carboy, dump into the carboy the 4#’s of Sugar and a couple gallons of apple juice, shake to dissolve the sugar, add the rest of the juice, pitch the yeast (dump the yeast packet into the carboy), put the topper and bubbler. Cover with a paper bag to protect the fragile and delicate yeast. Swampy notes the hard part was cutting the hole in the paper bag and asks "That's It?"

"Yep, Makin' Cider is Stupid Simple" Thus is conceived “Stupid Simple Swampy Cider”.

John Adams, in 1796, wrote in his diary about the virtues of cider, reporting that drinking a tankard of cider each morning put his stomach at ease and alleviated gas. Hence, "An apple a day ..."
Good thing this stuff is a healthy alternative to tea totaling.

Cider Season has started, and yes I’ve begun again, but due to pressures from the wife, I now have 3 glass carboys and can brew up to 16 gallons at once. Don’t ask why we need a regular supply of 16 gallons of cider. But we did run out of our home brew about 2 weeks ago.

Wedding Cider for my Son

It was tricky but I timed the cider and aging right, so today I've just barely had time to complete the bottling before heading off to his wedding. This is pure cider, crafted with love and care, and aged perfectly in the now perfectly seasoned Oak Barrell he got me for Christmas a couple years ago.



Great way to celebrate a great day.

Ginger Cider

Today I bottled a new batch and new flavor. As I brew less because I’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, and am down to drinking one bottle a week, this recipe is for 3 gallons not the standard 5.

I used to love ginger beer (not ale) but it is almost impossible to buy anymore. So as with the cider I looked for recipe’s to make home made ginger beer. There are a bunch and all are similar to traditional cider making, so. . . . .



Instead of plain Cider to a basic recipe I added a good sized chunk of ginger root (1/2 the root as sold at the grocery store). It was prepared by pealing and slicing it as thin as I could, boiling in about 2 cups of water for 5 min and letting sit to room temp. It was added to my 3 gallon carboy, with all the ginger pieces, and then the cider was made as normal.

The Cider came out delightfully spicy but it needed a bit more punch, next time I’ll use the entire root. It’s sweet and about 14% alcohol.
Recipe:

1 ginger root (whole thing)

1 oz Green Apple Extract

2 lbs sugar

2.5 gallons Winn Dixie Apple Juice

1 pkg Safale US-05 Dry Ale Yeast

Moose Mead

Finally made it!!

Drunken Moose Mead



Smooth Sweet and Strong

This is in honor of the moose (elk) in sweeden who got drunk drinking fermented apples and stuck in a tree. See my blog entry below.

48oz Honey
2 lbs Sugar
Dilute to 3 gallons with Apple Juice
1 oz Green apple extract
1 Package Champaigne yeast

Results were a 22% Alocohol, strongly carbonated, cyser that is awsome.

Comming Soon - Drunken Moose Cider

The animals had Cider even before man did. What we call a moose in Sweden they call an elk. Seems this one got a bit drunk on natures best and oldest fermentation.


Click Pix for full story

Should be cool enough to start brewing again in a couple weeks. Next batch will be named “Drunken Moose” and I’m going to use some yeast that can go to 20% alcohol in honor of this animal and on the drink shared by more than man.

Cyser - improved

Cysers have become a favorite of those who enjoy the efforts of the Teacher’s Brewing Coop. As a reminder, a cyser is a specific type of Mead. Mead being a fermented honey beverage. Mead is considered by some to be mankind's oldest fermented beverage. Mead is simply honey and water that has fermented. Early examples were fermented by wild yeast. Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil." Claude Lévi-Strauss makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."

When honey is mixed with fruit juice the resulting fermentation is a type of mead known as metheglin. When the fruit juice used in making metheglin is apple juice - the resulting fermentation is known as cyser.

The road side honey stand on Venable Street in Crystal River that I pass every day, sells natural Citrus County wild flower and orange blossom honey depending on the season. This with my standard base stock of WD brand Apple Cider and some tinkering with the recipe, has resulted in a repeatable sweet beverage containing around 15% alcohol, that because of it’s popularity, has precluded most of the regular cider this spring.

Improved Cyser Recipe

4.5 gallons Apple juice (bottle says cider)

5 lb. Citrus County natural honey (you may substitute a substandard honey from you local area, but it won’t come out as good as Citrus County Honey)

2.5 lb table sugar

½ oz green apple extract

1 pkg. Safale US-05 Dry Ale Yeast

Heat the honey by placing the honey container in a large pot of water on the stove and boiling the water. This will allow the honey to flow and dissolve. To your fermenting container add 1 gallon of the apple cider, then add the honey and stir it well. Add another 2 gallons of apple cider and the sugar and stir this well; add another gallon of apple cider and the yeast package and stir this well; top off with cider to 5 gallons and ½ oz of green apple extract. If you’re using a glass or plastic carboy and not a brewing bucket, cover it so that it isn’t exposed to light, or put it in a dark closet. A standard grocery store paper bag with a hole cut in the bottom makes a great cover for your carboy, and costs almost nothing. The fermentation should start in a day or so. Allow it to ferment 8 to 12 days depending on temperature. In my air conditioned house it’s done at about 9 days. Add 1/2 tsp of potassium sorbate to stop the fermentation and bottled the next day. The product is not clear but is delicious and drinkable right on bottling day. It will clarify over time, and after 6 months this brew is truly the nectar of the gods.

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)

Time to Start Brewing Again

John Adams, in 1796, wrote in his diary about the virtues of cider, reporting that drinking a tankard of cider each morning put his stomach at ease and alleviated gas. Hence, "An apple a day ..."

We'll I had to stop brewing in May, it's just too hot in Florida to get good cider in the summer. It's not summer any more. Last batch conceived on October 11th turned out wonderful, smooth, sweet, strong, and tasty. It was a very simple recipe (one from an old Adams recipe). 5 gallons of apple juice, 4 lbs of sugar, yeast, bottle after 12 days.

Now I need to learn patients. It tasted good as it was bottled, so it's been drunk some. as it ages it tastes better, too bad it won't last long enough to age properly, but another full 5 gallon batch was last Saturday. Plans are to put three gallons of int in the oak barrel to age.

Good thing this stuff is a healthy alternative to tea totaling.

Cyser

Cyser is a fermented beverage. It is a type of mead. Mead is considered by some to be mankind's oldest fermented beverage. Mead is simply honey and water that has fermented. Early examples were fermented by wild yeast. Mead is independently multicultural. It is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous. Its origins are lost in prehistory; "it can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil." Claude Lévi-Strauss makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."

Modern manufactured mead is a controlled product just as wine is. Makers control the variables in the manufacture, yielding a consistent product. When honey is mixed with fruit juice the resulting fermentation is a type of mead known as metheglin. When the fruit juice used in making metheglin is apple juice - the resulting fermentation is known as cyser.

One of the best books I've found to help me in my Cider making adventure happens to be a book on Mead. Making Mead seems a natural extension of making Cider. There is a road side honey stand on Venable in Crystal River that I pass every day, so the temptation was too great. 1/2 gallon (5 lbs.) of natural Citrus County Wild Flower Cider followed me home, and a trip to Winn Dixie for the cheapest WD brand Apple Cider (looks just like apple juice) and I was ready to try a new recipe.

This may be my best home brew, and is slightly sweet and very drinkable, in fact it may be the first batch to disapear before the next batch is complete. Too good to hog to myself, We've been readily sharing the cyser.


Recipe

4 gallons Apple juice (bottle says cider)

5 lb. Citrus County natural honey

1 pkg. white wine yeast

Dilute honey so it would flow with about an equal volume of water and heated it to just below the boiling point. This was added to fermenting bucket, and then 3 gallons of the apple juice was dumped in. The yeast package was pitched (dumped into bucket), and the last gallon of juice was poured in to mix the yeast. Bucket was sealed, and allowed to fermentation started in a day or so and was vigorous for about a week, at 8 days it tasted divine, and we added 1/2 tsp of potassium sorbate to stop the fermentation and bottled the next day. The product was not clear but was oh so delicious and drinkable. This will definitely be a formula to repeat.

I'll post a picture of a glass of this "Nectar of the Gods" soon.

Aged Cider part II

Started tasting the aged cider at around 5 weeks. The instructions for the oak barrel said that the first batch would age more quickly.

they were right at 6 weeks it was perfect, at 6 weeks and 2 days it was a little too smokey, for some, I like it.

The aged cider is crisp, dry, and smokey. It has the aroma of an aged whisky but the lightness and drinkability of a cider. although more recent experiments with Honey have lead to a Cider/Mead that I like better than the Oak Aged Cider alone, the flavor and drinkability, look, and smell of the Oak aged cider, is such that I will be doing another batch very soon.

Aging Hard Cider

That's the Oak Barrel my boy got me for Christmas. The first batch of cider to go in the Barrel has been about 2 weeks, and I had to sneek a small taste. It's starting to get the smokey oak flavor of a quality whiskey but since it is a Hard Cider it's not nearly as strong and much smoother. The cider I'm aging is of the standard recipe for beginners, 5 gallons of apple juice, 2 pounds of light brown sugar, and pitched with Red Star Campaign yeast, fermented till the bubbling stopped (2 weeks), then 3 gallons of that was siphoned off the top and put into a a glass carboy with 1/4 tsp dissolved gelatin to aid in clarification.



After a week of clarifying 2.6 gallons of the perfectly clear amber liquid was put into the barrel and the bung was inserted. This is a small oak barrel with medium charring, at 10L (2.6 gal) it has a much larger surface to volume area so ages spirits much faster than 55 gallon barrels do. The manufacturer recommends 2 to 3 months of aging. If 15 days was any indicator 2 months will make a fine mellow dry cider.

I'll keep you up to date