My brew club has some amazing brewers in it. One of which has won cider maker of the year at the NHBC 3 or 4 years in a row now.
Anyways one of them posted some info on our club forum about how to make cider and how to back sweeten it.
I found it very interesting and informative so I thought I would cross post it here. Enjoy
Anyways one of them posted some info on our club forum about how to make cider and how to back sweeten it.
I found it very interesting and informative so I thought I would cross post it here. Enjoy
Making Hard Cider:
Cider making, like beer brewing, can be likened to fishing: Sit on a dock with a cane pole, a hook and bobber and some worms, and you can catch fish. However, if you want to catch a Bonefish, Walleye, Muskellunge or a Blue Marlin, you need specialized equipment and procedures.
The goal in making a hard cider, other than making something you personally enjoy, is to make a complex, interesting alcoholic beverage. A lot of flavor profiles are allowed, or accepted in a hard cider that would be a serious flaw in other fermented beverages. Flavor descriptors like "Horse blanket", "Barnyard", "Bacon", or "Smokey" might sound bad, but as long as they don't predominate and are in balance with other flavors like "Sweet", "Floral", "Acid", "Apple" and "Tannins", in some styles of cider they are desired and enjoyable.
The Easy Way:
All you really have to do is leave the cap loose on a jug of (unpreserved) cider, and leave the jug on the counter. When it gets good and tangy, it's at about 3%. I used to do this back in college. I would get two gallons, put one in the fridge, one on the counter. When the one on the counter got good and fizzy, I would mix them together, and store them in the fridge. This makes a very sweet cider, and needs to be consumed rather quickly, as it will keep working in the fridge. This cider does not actually fit any established guidelines as a hard cider, but it's tasty and fun.
Still Easy:
To get slightly more serious about it, replace the cap with an airlock. After it's done fermenting (spontaneously, with the naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria), you can add back about 10% sweet cider (if desired), and store it in the fridge. It will also need to be consumed quickly, as the thin plastic jug is not impermeable to oxygen, and the cider will eventually turn into vinegar.
Getting Harder:
To get a lot more serious, put it in a glass jug or carboy, and use an airlock. That will keep extra oxygen out, and prevent vinegaring.
To be completely out of control, get ten gallons, knock out the wild stuff with campden, add pectic enzyme, acid blend and wine tannins. Pitch the wine yeast of your choice, ferment it out, adjust the final acidity and sweetness after malo-lactic refermentation has occurred in the spring, stabilize it with sulfites, counter pressure bottle it and make fancy labels for the bottles.
Those are the real basics. Below are some specifics.