Starting with cider

[bates]

Hi team,

Last week I came up with the brilliant idea of trying to produce my own cider.
So far I managed to get the juice out of the apples and I have to say it tastes top notch.

Now I'm a bit blocked and I do require good advice an tips from your side.
Sorry for merging all my questions but it's easier to have just one topic going on.

I have two industrial buckets from my bakery + lit. Is this good enough to pour the juice in and add the yeast? Or Do I need to purchase a glass bottle which is air proof?

After I managed to get it all together how, whats the best way to sterilize everything? To be ready for the next trial?

I'm aiming to make a dry cider, any tips o how to do that?

Many thanks.

 

[TopherM]

Describe your "industrial buckets." It sounds like they must be food safe, since they are in use in a bakery, but we need to make sure. Also, do they have lids, and are you planning on drilling holes for bungs and airlocks?

As far as making dry cider, it's REALLLLL easy. Just dump your sweet cider into the sterilized food safe bucket (sterilize with StarSan solution), add yeast (I use Nottingham or S-05 for my ciders), then cover with a lid with airlock and let it ferment for about 2 weeks. The closer you can get the ambient temp to about a consistent 60F during fermentation, the better.

Bottle with priming sugar if you want it carbonated, let it condition for a few more weeks.

Ciders are good to drink at about 6 weeks, but the apple taste tends to become stronger and more complex with time, and ciders really peak with about 6-8 months of conditioning. I typically start drinking mine at about 8 weeks, but inevitably the last one is always the best one!

Let me know if you have any further questions! There is a CIDER and MEAD subforum where you can find more info if you want to research more details.

 

[bates]

Cheers mate, thanks for the heads up.

1) I'm planning to buy a glass bottle, designed for brewing. Should be the easiest I recon. When I'm reading what would be the best way to clean it?

2) For the moment I just bought regular beer yeast. We don't have any specialized shop around and buying the quality yeast is something I'm planning to do after my first trial.

 

[freisste]

Clean by any means necessary. And by clean, I mean make it look clean (as opposed to dirty). Then rinse really well - you do t want any soap residue or anything else like that. Then sanitize prior to bottling. People seem to agree that StarSan is the best, but there are plenty of no-rinse sanitizer a that should be fine.

What do you mean by "regular beer yeast"?