Making hard cider

[renoun]

I know there's a few home brewers around here but is anybody making cider? I've got a tree full of asian pears and friends who are getting a cider press this weekend. I haven't done any brewing or cider making on my own before but have helped friends brew a few times and have a pretty good idea of the basic process.

I'll probably stop by the brewer's supply place on Greenwood to pick up whatever yeast strain they recommend and plan on boosting the specific gravity with some honey. Unless somebody has a carboy to loan me I'll probably wind up fermenting in a 2-3 of growler bottles with water traps. I figure that doing small batches will allow me the latitude to experimenting with adding some ginger to one of them.

Does this seem reasonable?

[Nwbrewer]

I know there's a few home brewers around here but is anybody making cider? I've got a tree full of asian pears and friends who are getting a cider press this weekend. I haven't done any brewing or cider making on my own before but have helped friends brew a few times and have a pretty good idea of the basic process.

I'll probably stop by the brewer's supply place on Greenwood to pick up whatever yeast strain they recommend and plan on boosting the specific gravity with some honey. Unless somebody has a carboy to loan me I'll probably wind up fermenting in a 2-3 of growler bottles with water traps. I figure that doing small batches will allow me the latitude to experimenting with adding some ginger to one of them.

Does this seem reasonable?

Probably a good idea to soak the pears overnight with some campden tablets to kill off any wild yeast living on the skins before pressing.

I'm slammed right now with work and building stuff, but if you can make it out to Woodinville I have a carboy you can use.

Jake

[spatman]

Ross, check out homebrewtalk.com. Lots of great info in the forums (for beer, at least. I'm sure there's knowledgable people in the cider forums, too.)

[Matt S.]

Careful with the ginger, it's potent.

You know what goes great with pear? Elderflower, like St Germain liqueur.

[renoun]

Careful with the ginger, it's potent.

Isn't that the point? I really like ginger, Rachel's Ginger Beer is my favorite.

I went to pick the tree this afternoon and was rather disappointed. Guess I'll be hitting up the neighbors with unpicked fruit. Anybody in the Shoreline area got fruit that needs picking?

[camerone]

Isn't that the point? I really like ginger, Rachel's Ginger Beer is my favorite.

No such thing as too much ginger, IMNSHO. I actually pour a glass of ginger beer and toss in a shot of fernet and a handful of ice. Great cocktail and one of my recent go-to drinks.

On the hard cider - don't forget you'll need a pot to boil the honey/water mixture before you mix it in with the apple cider. For one, it makes a better product, in general, with a more floral flavor, but, more importantly, it'll keep the honey from overpowering the delicate asian pear flavors.

I'm honestly not sure how good asian pear cider is going to be; I have an apple tree in my yard at home, and the apples there make terrible cider even though they're generally good eats (when the coddling moths haven't gotten to them...) I would think that the good eating varieties of asian pear may not be sharp enough for hard cider.

That said, I'll volunteer to taste test

[renoun]

Well the pressing was today but I had a change of plans. The Asian pear in the yard didn't yield enough to be worth pressing but I acquired a case and a half of apples that pressed into four gallons of juice. It's had some campden added and is waiting to have it's specific gravity checked tomorrow before I add some EC-1118 yeast, possibly suger or honey, and start the primary fermentation. I think I'll be adding some ginger to half the cider, we'll see what happens.

[cofford]

EC-1118 is good stuff. It took my sack mead to 20% abv after 5 years.

[renoun]

EC-1118 is good stuff. It took my sack mead to 20% abv after 5 years.

I hope it will be ok with the cooler temperatures in our house during primary fermentation. I'm running a space heater in the kitchen tonight to help it get started but that isn't going to be happening long term.

If there are any other mead fans around Uber Tavern on Aurora just North of Green Lake usually has several available by the glass in addition to eighteen taps and a big bottle collection.

[renoun]

So it's been 24 hours since I pitched the yeast. Shouldn't I be seeing visible yeasty action by now? No bubbles/suds on the must and no action in the water traps yet. I'm thinking that I'll be getting some more yeast tomorrow if I don't see anything happening in the morning.

[renoun]

So it's been 24 hours since I pitched the yeast. Shouldn't I be seeing visible yeasty action by now? No bubbles/suds on the must and no action in the water traps yet. I'm thinking that I'll be getting some more yeast tomorrow if I don't see anything happening in the morning.

[spatman]

Fermentation can really vary in vigor among different yeast strains, at least in beer. I've had some yeast that started off slow, so I would wait another day or two before pitching more.

Did you make a yeast starter before you pitched it?

[renoun]

Did you make a yeast starter before you pitched it?

From what I read that seems to a beer brewing step that is skipped for cider and wine making which have different sugars available to the yeast. I just used boiled water that had cooled to 105F to proof the yeast per the instructions on the package and warmed the juice up to about 85F.

I suppose I can have some patience, I may pick up a spare sachet of yeast since it is cheap and use it Wed. morning if things still seem slow.

I'm drinking a imperial rye IPA from Reuben's Brews in Ballard with my spicy stew tonight. Good stuff worth checking out.

[renoun]

Good news, I've got obvious fermentation this afternoon. Hopefully it is by my intended yeast strain.

[eliseaboo]

Did you make a yeast starter before you pitched it?

From what I read that seems to a beer brewing step that is skipped for cider and wine making which have different sugars available to the yeast. I just used boiled water that had cooled to 105F to proof the yeast per the instructions on the package and warmed the juice up to about 85F.

I suppose I can have some patience, I may pick up a spare sachet of yeast since it is cheap and use it Wed. morning if things still seem slow.

I'm drinking a imperial rye IPA from Reuben's Brews in Ballard with my spicy stew tonight. Good stuff worth checking out.

In my experience, yes - cider starts slower than beer for that "different sugar" reason. Good that it started for you! It will also ferment much dryer (some juices can get down to 1.000 I've heard, but never seen though I had one get down to 1.002 once) If you like a sweeter cider, bottle with some frozen juice concentrate (no preservatives!) and then stop fermentation once it's got enough carbonation. You can do this by sticking the whole batch in the fridge, or by stove-top pasteurization. Good luck!

[renoun]

It's still bubbling away in the closet.

I've found the Whitbey Is. Critter's thread of cider making over on homebrewtalk.com. 800+ posts since 2008 isn't quite as prolific as Jan and no cartoons though.

It looks like a bottle carbonated cider is going to be too complex for this batch but I'm still hoping for a drinkable still cider by Thanksgiving.

[spatman]

Can you force carbonate cider?

[renoun]

Can you force carbonate cider?

Yes, that is probably the most workable method.

Several years ago I demolished the interior of the Copper Gate Tavern in Ballard and was able to salvage about a dozen corney kegs, the C02 regulators from the soda guns, and a bunch of the tap hardware. I gave it all to buddy who has a pretty nice home-brew setup now. I haven't gotten any beer from him lately and I'm thinking about reclaiming a corny keg and related hardware for a little while to force carb my cider. I've got a few growlers and several 750ml or 1l flip top bottles that I can bottle it in.

[spatman]

Too bad you're not closer, I have a ton of 22oz bottles I'm going to get rid of soon.

[isac777]

Not sure your location but i have spare cornys for rent...price is some cider [SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH]. Location : south everett area

[renoun]

An update:
The gallon growlers are still bubbling away but I didn't account for head space when I correlated cider volume and fermenter size so I had wound up with a bit more juice that I put in to a 1l bottle with an air trap. I racked it off into a 750ml flip top bottle on Friday night and capped it then in anticipation of a group dinner tonight. It went into the reefer in the early afternoon today to chill before being served. We had a very, very sparkling bottle of sweet cider with a low alcohol content, probably in the 3%-5% range.

It compared very nicely with some Norman style cider that a friend had gotten at the farmer's market yesterday and didn't have any of the off tastes that the commercial cider had. There was a bit of yeasty flavor but the apple flavor was rather dominant.

I'm out of town for a couple of days but I'm seriously considering racking off half my remaining cider to bottle carbonate while it is still sweet when I get back. It looks like people on HomebrewTalk are having success pasteurizing bottled bottle carbonated cider to stop the fermentation while it is still sweet and before the bottles explode. I've also discovered one of my friend has been hording flip top 750ml bottles which will work well for my low-tech low effort cider making. I suppose that I'll need to acquire a hydrometer and a racking cane soon though.

[Emilyrc]

Along these lines, I have a question. We were going to start our next batch, and I couldn't find one of the carboys. It has apparently had cider in it since spring, and I totally forgot about it. Can I salvage it or should I just chuck it?

[renoun]

Along these lines, I have a question. We were going to start our next batch, and I couldn't find one of the carboys. It has apparently had cider in it since spring, and I totally forgot about it. Can I salvage it or should I just chuck it?

Did it still have an effective air trap? Have you sampled it? If it isn't vinegar than it has potential.

I'm no expert but it might be really good and should have fermented out enough sugars to have a preservative amount of alcohol. It obviously will be very dry which may not be your thing but if it doesn't have off tastes you can probably rack it off and tinker with it. There are plenty of options for back sweetening it (juice concentrate, various sugars, artificial sweeteners, honey, etc.) if you want something not as quite as dry. Your dormant yeast might spring back into action so you'll have to pay attention.

The cider forum at Homebrew Talk will certainly have better advice than I can offer. If you have hydrometer readings that might give you a better idea of what you are working with sugar and alcohol wise.

[renoun]

An Update:

My cider has been fermenting for ten days now. I picked up a racking cane, a hydrometer, and related gadgets this afternoon on my way home. I saved a sample of the juice I started with in the fridge and (assuming that there wasn't much fermentation going on at 38 degrees) the original gravity after I added the honey was 1.070 which could yield 9% alcohol by volume if I let it ferment out all the way. I'm happily sampling the wares as I type this. Right now the sweetness of that was in the first bottle we sampled has disappeared and it is tasting tart like a good granny smith apple.

Fermentor #1 is currently at a specific gravity of 1.015
Fermentor #2 1.017
Fermentor #3 1.015
Fermentor #4 1.015
Fermentor #5 (With Ginger) 1.002 (almost completely fermented out)

The Apple-Ginger cider got bottled into 750ml flip top bottles and back-sweetened with 2tbsp of fine baking sugar. I'm going to leave it to bottle carbonate for a couple of days and then pasteurize it.. It was too dry without being sweetened but should be pretty drinkable without being like pop.

I'm going to bottle #1-#3 tonight too. They are currently around 7.5% ABV and might hit 8% before I get a chance to pasteurize them. Once I have a chance to collect more bottles and sanitize them I'll bottle second batch which will be even drier since the air trap on #4 is still bubbling away.

Other than collecting more bottles or growlers I think I'm probably pretty set for gear for under $50. Perhaps a carboy is in my future too though.

[renoun]

Oops, bottle bomb! Good things I had the foresight to ferment in a tub.