Cider #2
Posted on November 18th, 2005 by erik
Since my first attempt at making a hard cider turned out very well, I decided to take another hack at it. This time, the recipe’s a bit different:
Fermentables
- 4.75 Gallons store-bought apple cider (cub brand)
- 4 Cans Welch’s Frozen White Grape/Raspberry Juice
- 2 Cans Old Orchard Frozen Cranberry Juice
Yeast
- White Labs 570 - Belgian Golden Ale
Notes
- 11/18/05 - Gave a 1-minute shot of oxygen and pitched yeast at 8:00PM. OG 1.060.
- 11/19/05 - First signs of fermentation at 1200 today. Thin coat of foam covering the top of the cider at 2000.
- 11/20/05 - At 1850, all the kreusen is gone, but fermentation is still roaring away. It’s bubbling about once every second and a half or so.
- 12/6/05 - At 2130, racked to secondary. Current gravity is 1.006, making the current ABV 6.8%. Tasted pretty good, though there is still a ton of suspended yeast that skew the taste of the cider.
- 03/24/06 - Bottled. Used 3/4 cup of corn sugar to prime. FG = 1.002, making this puppy 7.6%. Not too bad.
Sounds good…the Belgian ale yeast is a very interesting idea. I wonder if it would give it more spiciness and esters, like Belgian ale? With the raspberry/whitegrape/cranberry flavours too it should end up quite unique.
I did one I just bottled, my first cider, and it was also a bit of a hodgepodge of flavours…4 gallons of cider, 2 quarts of blackcurrant nectar, 1 quart of unsweetened pure cranberry juice, and a lb of brown sugar. Ended up at 1.078 original gravity, fermented with White Labs English Cider, and had a strange, winey sourness to it. Pleasant in a unique way.