peach and nectarine cider

[dohof2]

Hi
I have a fruit press and my brother in law grows peaches and nectarines.
so when concluding the facts peach and nectarine cider seem Inevitable.

I aim towards hard cider. did anyone ever try making one?
what kind of yeast do you think I should use?
I need to sterile the juice I'm thing about warming the juice to 160F for 20 minutes or so.
I'll be more than happy for any advice you could give.

 

[hbrookie]

I've got one aging now. I didn't press my fruit (press wasn't available). I chopped mine (boiled for 10 min before dumping in carboy) and added a little over 1 pound of peaches for each gallon. I used Motts apple juice for half of my liquid, and made a syrup of 1 pound sucrose per gallon of water for the other half of my liquid.

I used wlp300 yeast in an attempt to preserve the peach flavor. It did well, but gave off some banana notes.

things you should note: Those peach chunks/pulp will ferment slowly for what seems like all eternity. I had mine in primary for a month and it was just bubbling away until I racked the cider out from under the floating chunks. You'll have peach "goo" on top and bottom of fermenter if you do this. So you have to rack out of the middle as best you can.

Once I racked the cider out, I didn't have any more fermentation going on, and it was relatively clear (I had mine in fermenter for 1 month). So, after 2 days in secondary (just to make sure it was finished) I bottled it. It was pretty tasty prior to carb/conditioning so I expect a pretty good product here.

Also, when I made my syrup, I brought it all the way up to a boil. This appears to have created some more complex sugars that weren't fermentable because my FG was 1.016 which was quite a bit higher than expected.

If you're not keen on the banana notes, I'd try a wlp775 English cider yeast. It's supposed to leave lots of aromas/flavors behind, but will ferment a bit drier than the wlp300. I'm actually planning a batch for next week that will use the 775.

 

[dohof2]

Thanks
I'm thinking about doing it 100% peaches.
About the yeast I'm thinking about white wine yeast, but I want a strain with medium attenuation so the final product will have some peach flavor.

 

[hbrookie]

I just popped the cap on one of my peach ciders that's been aging about 3 weeks. It was made with the wlp300 hefe yeast. The "banana notes" have aged to banana flavoring. They were kind of nice when it was fresh out of the fermenter, but now it's getting a bit overpowering. I'd go with the English cider yeast. I think I'm going to chaulk my wlp300 up to a failed experiment.

 

[dohof2]

Sorry to hear that.
failed batch is always a bummer..
I will let you know how my batch advances..