n8r1
Member
Hi all,
Yesterday I began making my first batch of hard cider from fresh pressed apples.
I live in Oregon, and although our northern neighbor Washington is known as the apple state, we have our fair share of apple trees as well. There are dozens of trees within walking distance of my house, so I found a few "full" ones and asked my neighbors if they wouldn't mind if I picked a few buckets. Nobody cared, so I picked from 5 different trees in hopes of having a nice, diverse supply to offset any apples that were too sweet or tart.
The picture of the apples is about 75% of my supply. I read that you need 100 pounds of apples to make 5 gallons of juice, so I estimated what I would need. Turns out I have nearly double the apples from what I actually needed to have, so I'm going to repeat this entire process later this week. More to come on that.
I then used our standing mixer with the slicing attachment to quickly chop up the apples before putting them into the fruit press. Each full press yielded about 1/2 gallon of juice.
After filling a 5 gallon cooler, I transferred the juice to a carboy, filtering through a sieve and cheesecloth to remove any of the chunks remaining.
Finally, I added 5 crushed campden tablets to the carboy and put on an airlock. I know that you only need to wait 24-48 hours before pitching yeast, but I'm going to give it 72 hours just to make sure. I'm going to use Mangrove Jack's Cider Yeast.
Next steps:
Once fermentation is finished, I will transfer to a secondary.
My local homebrew supply shop said that cider is best when aged several months, so I am planning on keeping it in the secondary until after Christmas. Then I will transfer to a keg, force carbonate, and hopefully have cider to drink sometime after the New Year.
Whew!
Like I mentioned earlier, I have enough apples to make another 5 gallons of juice, so I'm planning on processing those later in the week when I have some free time.
Do any of you cider experts out there have any advice for me at this point? Did I miss any steps? Leave out a key ingredient? My goal is to have a keg full of crisp, dry cider; we don't like the sweet stuff nearly as much.
Also, would any of you have done anything differently when processing the apples into juice? I probably won't have time to juice the rest of these apples until Thursday or later.
Thanks all!
Yesterday I began making my first batch of hard cider from fresh pressed apples.
I live in Oregon, and although our northern neighbor Washington is known as the apple state, we have our fair share of apple trees as well. There are dozens of trees within walking distance of my house, so I found a few "full" ones and asked my neighbors if they wouldn't mind if I picked a few buckets. Nobody cared, so I picked from 5 different trees in hopes of having a nice, diverse supply to offset any apples that were too sweet or tart.
The picture of the apples is about 75% of my supply. I read that you need 100 pounds of apples to make 5 gallons of juice, so I estimated what I would need. Turns out I have nearly double the apples from what I actually needed to have, so I'm going to repeat this entire process later this week. More to come on that.
I then used our standing mixer with the slicing attachment to quickly chop up the apples before putting them into the fruit press. Each full press yielded about 1/2 gallon of juice.
After filling a 5 gallon cooler, I transferred the juice to a carboy, filtering through a sieve and cheesecloth to remove any of the chunks remaining.
Finally, I added 5 crushed campden tablets to the carboy and put on an airlock. I know that you only need to wait 24-48 hours before pitching yeast, but I'm going to give it 72 hours just to make sure. I'm going to use Mangrove Jack's Cider Yeast.
Next steps:
Once fermentation is finished, I will transfer to a secondary.
My local homebrew supply shop said that cider is best when aged several months, so I am planning on keeping it in the secondary until after Christmas. Then I will transfer to a keg, force carbonate, and hopefully have cider to drink sometime after the New Year.
Whew!
Like I mentioned earlier, I have enough apples to make another 5 gallons of juice, so I'm planning on processing those later in the week when I have some free time.
Do any of you cider experts out there have any advice for me at this point? Did I miss any steps? Leave out a key ingredient? My goal is to have a keg full of crisp, dry cider; we don't like the sweet stuff nearly as much.
Also, would any of you have done anything differently when processing the apples into juice? I probably won't have time to juice the rest of these apples until Thursday or later.
Thanks all!