Cider from juice tutorial?

Every year in Sept. here in Ohio we get tons of apples and have local festivals.

I've got this idea to make some cider.

My idea is to simply get the unpasturized freshly pressed cider, toss some yeast and put an air lock on it and let it do it's thing.

I'm not looking for anything fancy, just hard cider. Not trying to clone anything or have clear cider either just plain old fermented cider, what you get is what you get type of thing. As simple as possible.

Anything wrong with what I'm proposing here? It would probably only be a few gallons, and I doubt I'd bottle it, just let it ferment, then bottle off to a few jugs and drink them up right away. Have a party, that kind of thing.

Am I crazy?

Thoughts?

Sounds like a good plan to me. People have been making it pretty much this way for...hundreds...thousands of years. Of course they just used wild yeasts present on the apples, but I'm sure they would have used a brewers yeast if they had it.

Sounds like a great idea!

Nice and simple, nothing wrong with that. If you start it in September, let it go until February or March. Pop in the airlock, make sure it is sealed good, put it in a dark cool place, and just forget it. Until March, that is.

Guessing the juice will have a starting gravity of 1.050, and letting it go dry to 0.995, you will probably end up with an ABV of about 7%.

Any thought as to what yeast you will use?

Husk said:

Am I crazy?

Click to expand...

Possibly, but we can't tell from this post.

That's pretty much how cider is made. In fact you can even leave out the yeast-tossing and take your chances with wild yeast, which is how all ciders were made until relatively recently. There will be plenty of yeast in the juice (unless it's pasteurized), because it's on the skins of the apples and all over the grinding and pressing equipment. The producer might have to pasteurize or UV-sanitize to meet HCCP standards nowadays, but if you can find one who doesn't, you can just let the wild yeast do its thing and hope for the best. This is probably best done in cold weather, late in the fall or early winter.

I make a lot of cider, growing and pressing my own fruit, and the only additional steps I include are lightly sulfiting the fresh juice (to prevent the ever-present mold from growing on the surface before fermentation gets going) and racking off the sediment after initial ferment dies down. Contrary to the usual advice (and all beer-making practice), I try to slow down the fermentation as much as possible, by under-pitching yeast, fermenting cold, racking off, etc. Long, slow, cold fermentations leave more apple aroma and flavor in the cider.