First cider

[bolus14]

I just "made" my first cider about 3 weeks ago and bottled this past weekend, I started out with 3 gallons of juice. I added some Black Cherry juice to half and the other half I kept straight cider. I used plain store brand (Wegmans) 100% Apple Juice and R.W Knudson Black Cherry juice. I also used WY1450 (Denny's Favorite) as I had some on hand with no plans to use it since I'm trying some other yeast for stouts and ports, which I have found Denny's to be great for.

The O.G. was 1.045 and it got down to .998, I then added 40oz of Apple Juice at bottling to the plain half and 20oz/20oz of Apple juice and Black Cherry juice to the other half. I filled a soda bottle of each kind and the rest went into glass beer bottles. After about 48 hours I dishwasher pasteurized the glass bottles since the soda bottle was showing it would be carbed up. I didn't wait for the bottle to be as hard as a normal soda bottle since i didn't want "sparkling" cider i just wanted a very light carbonation to it.

My wife and I opened a bottle of each last night and for the plain we both felt it needs more Apple flavor, we both like McKenzie's hard cider as a reference. It's got the right tartness level to me but is lacking the Apple flavor that McKenzie's has, I'm guessing after reading the OP that a little Acid Blend could help. The Black Cherry needs a lot more Black Cherry juice as it doesn't taste that much different than the plain.

In the end it wasn't a bad experience, especially given there's very little time compared to beer brewing. I only wish I had made a couple 1/2 gal batches instead of 3 gal to start off with. Part of this was to see what using plain juice and using the easiest sweetening technique would yield, and the end it's not bad, especially for a 6% easier drinker that will help in me getting my pipeline filled back up.

 

[Yooper]

Often the 'apple' flavor returns with a little aging, so don't give up hope already!

I'm not a big fan of fermented black cherry juice, but when I made a sour cherry wine I added a bit of it, and it tasted like cough syrup for the first few months and then mellowed into something pretty nice. So give it some time!

 

[bolus14]

Thanks.
Should I being aging at cellaring temps, room temp, or fridge? Does it matter?

 

[Yooper]

Cider and wine age faster at room temperature, while cellaring slows down the aging process and fridge temperatures slow it to where the aging is almost nonexistent.

It depends on where the flavor is now, but I really don't know about pasteurized ciders as that has been heated. It probably changes the profile, but I'm not experienced enough with heated ciders or wines to say.

 

[kXb]

I age my ciders at room temp and they really seem to hit their stride at ~6months. Last June I made a batch of apple cider and experimented at secondary by pulling out 1g with stawberries, 1g with blueberries and 1g with raspberries. I tried my apple-blueberry cider last night and it was phenomenal! Be patient for sure.

I have never tried pasteurizing. I add campden tablets and/or potassium sorbate to halt additional fermentation when bottling and the result is a still cider.

 

[bolus14]

If i've already put them in the fridge will moving them out to room temp harm the aging process? I'm familiar with handling beer for aging and such, just not sure if cider falls into a different set of rules.

 

[MindenMan]

There should be no problem moving your cider out of the fridge to room temperature. I agree with Yooper; young cider doesn't often taste like much of anything, but if you will wait 6 months or more, you could have something really nice. My personal experience is, the higher the ABV%, the longer the cider takes to mellow out. I have some high ABV cider I made a year and a half ago, and it's not bad, but more time will be necessary. To note; the cider I am referring to was bottle pasteurized.

 

[bolus14]

Thanks for the feedback. From this I think I'll pull them from the fridge and put the where I age my beers and try one or two every couple weeks to see how they progress. Right now the plain has some apple taste to it, if that's abnormal maybe its from the Calypso dry hopping since they're supposed to impart some apple.