Pickled_Pepper said:I've never tried the above recipe, but a beginner recipe is really as simple as putting yeast in juice and letting it ferment. Obviously you need to be vigilant with your sanitation and keep your fermentation temps within the range of your yeast strain...but thats about it.
devianttouch said:I prefer to sweeten with apple juice concentrate, but it's really up to you. Dextrose will work fine. It's a personal taste issue I think.
If you want sweet and carbonated you will need to either use an unfermentable sweetener (Splenda works), stovetop pasturize, keg, or refrigerate and drink quickly. Cold-storage will SLOW the yeast way down, but it generally will not kill them and sometimes does not stop them. If you have sweet carbonated cider in your fridge for awhile you run a risk of exploding bottles in the fridge!
devianttouch said:As for yeast - I pitch it dry. Rehydrating is probably better, but I'm making smaller batches (1 and 2 gallon batches) so I just pitch a whole packet in dry and it works perfectly. Starters seem to be more important for beer than for cider, and they help a lot with high gravity situations, but for regular cider it's not necessary.
I'm also doing 1 Gal batches. D you throw the whole packet into 1 or 2 gallons, or do you divide it up accordingly? Since it says use the packet for a five gallon batch, I was going to split it up into fifths, and then pitch 1/5 per gallon. Or does it matter? I'm thinking a little more yeast would just help things move along more quickly, I guess, but not really do any harm, right?...
Pickled_Pepper said:And pitching a gallon of juice on top of a nottingham yeast cake works great for your next batch. (Just saved another $2 )
Just started a new batch. I prefer to make caveman juice, ie. even a caveman could or may have done it.
I use a couple organic apples sliced with the skin on added to 1/2 gal apple juice. Shaken daily for the first three to four days under an airlock until fermentation is noted through the airlock. Once this is going good shake it up strain off the fruit bits and add to 4.5 gal apple juice for a 5 gal batch. Plan to bottle in sanitized 16oz. Plastic soda bottles in 2 weeks. Let age in the bottles for 2-3 weeks unrefridgerated then keep refridgerated and consume. Have made this this way before with many compliments and comments it resembles redds apple ale.
when I attempted to shake it up it blew its top and sprayed cider across two rooms and a hallway floor to ceiling. LOL... Oh well live brew and learn I guess.
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