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First Hard Cider Attempt

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Chairrock

NewBee
Registered Member
Dec 10, 2013
32
0
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Finger Lakes ,NY
Hi all,
Just found this wonderful forum. I will be starting my first batch of mead in a few days. However I started my first batch of cider yesterday.

6 1/2 gallons UV treated sweet cider
4 #s raw honey,my own wild flower
1- Lalvin EC-1118 yeast

I poured 3 gallons cider into carboy first.
I heated one gallon of cider to 104' F and added honey to blend.
I BRIEFLY mixed 2 oz. 104'F water and yeast.
I added yeast slurry to cider/honey mix and immediately added to carboy.
Topped off carboy with cider to just above end of flat side.

Installed bung and airlock at 11:30 AM yesterday,12/10.

Specific Gravity of 1:058 at start. Room temp of 65'F.

It started to bubble once every 25 seconds around 2PM.

Now 22 hours later it is bubbling every 15 seconds...

I hope I didn't screw up with my pitching, of course I read the directions AFTER I hurried the rehydration.......

Any thoughts?
 
You should be fine. I remember the first time I made beer. Re hydration wasn't even in the dictionary. I just sprinkled the yeast on top of the bucket. It made great beer! Same with my first cider. No worries! Just keep monitoring (by drinking it).
 
I agree with mannye. You should be fine but I would remove the airlock and bung. During the active fermentation stage there is no need to keep air from the cider and in fact you might want to agitate the cider to introduce air into the container. At this stage your fermentation may become so active that you will have cider filling your airlock. If I were you I would pour the cider into a 7 gallon or larger food grade bucket. When the fermentation slows to a crawl (the gravity falls to about 1.005) then there may be less CO2 being produced to blanket the liquid so at that point I would rack and seal with an airlock.

But three quick comments. You say you added 4 lbs of honey and yet the gravity is still only 1.058. That seems quite low to me. I would expect the apples themselves without any added sweetener to be around 1.050 or even higher. I would estimate that 4 lbs of honey in 6 gallons would increase the SG by about .020, so I would have thought that you would have been closer to 1.070. Are you certain you mixed the honey well and did not simply take a reading from the apple juice and all the honey is closer to the bottom of your carboy?

The other point is this: I often make hard cider (and apple wine) and I find that I need to add some acid blend to increase the acidity of the cider. I also add tannin to increase its bitterness as I have not found any sweet apple cider (non alcoholic) that ferments with quite the same taste that I associate with the hard cider I used to drink in Britain many , many moons ago. Lowering the pH and adding tannins seems to improve it nicely.

Last point: if you can hold back a gallon of the cider for about a year the malic acids transform to lactic and the taste of the cider goes into a different league. Certain harshness that is in the cider simply drops away ...
 
Now 27 hours, with a bubble every 6 seconds, can see the lil guys rising inside the carboy.
I thought I had mixed the honey well with the one gallon of heated cider which was then poured into carboy vigorously and topped with more. Perhaps it was layered....
I'll add that I had a tiny piece of masking tape,say 1/2 inch square on top of the hygrometer with a piece of fine sewing string to lower the hygrometer into the carboy.
Maybe it weighed it down a bit???
I try to remember about the acids for next time.
Thanks so much for the encouraging words!!!

I might add that on the very top of the must, ah, learning the lingo, is a layer of light brown crud, and under a layer of almost white crud... what is with the 2 different colors? other than that white is newer?

Update, it is not a layer of crud, just a ring around the top of the must. Looks like dead yeast...the white is just the bubbles coming up...

Don't mean to be a pest, but this is very exciting!!!
 
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OK, went back to the cider mill, bought 2 more gallons of the same cider.
Checked SG with 2 hygrometers...1.050 and 1.052 .
The owner of the mill measured the Brix and came up with 13.

So 13 x 4 = 52 which converts to 1.052.

So I guess I should call my chemistry experiment CYSER!

BTW, my cider guy recommended 2# honey and 2# brown sugar, for color he said.....

One bubble per second... 30+ hours. hope it doesn't wind up on the floor....

The cider guy just got an order for another 1200 gallons to a local hard cider place... Warthog....Earls Meadery...
 
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Are you getting cider from cider apples or eating apples? Your hyDrometer sounds like its working just fine, 1.050 is certainly sweet. You are in an area of NY with a lot of small orchards and some of them grow cider apples, have you checked around? The cider apples will have more tannins and a better blend of acid to sugar, but adding honey makes it better anyways! WVMJ
 
WVMJack said:
Are you getting cider from cider apples or eating apples? Your hyDrometer sounds like its working just fine, 1.050 is certainly sweet. You are in an area of NY with a lot of small orchards and some of them grow cider apples, have you checked around? The cider apples will have more tannins and a better blend of acid to sugar, but adding honey makes it better anyways! WVMJ
Click to expand...

This batch of sweet cider was a blend of 5 different apples, I don't remember which. Each batch seems to be different .
A few weeks ago, for Thanksgiving, he used straight Honey Crisp...that was some of the best sweet cider I ever had.

Bubbling away once a second....

I'll ask next time if he is working about the cider apples.

Luckily he had a great season in the orchards, so he will have apples until April !!!More Cyser!!!
 
Envious of being able to get orchard fresh apples! I''d be making apple pie, apple pie moonshine, pork and apple pie, walnut, blue cheese and apple salad...and that would just be this week's dinner!
 
4 & 1/2 days at apprx. 60 degrees. 1 bubble thru glass airlock every 1 1/2 seconds. Brown crud is gone except for a ring on carboy above a nice white meringue.Looking good. Smells nice too.
 
Looks like it's going well! Don't panic if it goes dry and starts tasting like poop. Just backsweeten when you're done.
 
mannye said:
Looks like it's going well! Don't panic if it goes dry and starts tasting like poop. Just backsweeten when you're done.
Click to expand...

I expect it to be dry because of my yeast selection. If we like it that dry is to be determined!!!LOL

Just had a bottle or Earls Meadery Warthog Cider. 5% ABV. Ran it thru the hydrometer and it read 1.030. We liked it but woudn't mind a bit less sweet.

We had some Woodchuck Granny Smith and that was a bit dryer.

Earls used hard cider, sweet cider,cane sugar,malic acid,sulfites, and added carbonation... seems pretty commercial? ( they get their sweet cider,special blend, from the same mill we used.)

I'll have to ask if that blend is available to public...
 
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I like it on the sweet/tart side. So Strongbow and Magners or Hornsby are my targets whenever I make it.

Many years ago my local homebrew shop recommended a champagne yeast. I will have to dig up the papers and confirm.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Well we really got the bug. We have started 2 more 6 gallon batches of cyser.
When I bought the yeast for the first batch, which is doing nicely BTW,I bought 2 extra yeasts.

So in addition to the first batch I now have #2 started with Wyeast Dry Mead with a BG of 1.068 ,with 2t of tannin,and 6t of nutrient on 12/18. The cider was 1.051 BG before I added wildflower honey. Doing nicely.

Batch #3 is the same in all details except of a BG of 1.062 and White Labs English Cider yeast. Also doing well , but a bit slower than #1 and #2.

The apple blend is Jonagold,Ida Red,Spy Gold,Northern Spy, and Empire.

We have amped up our purchase of better beer in bottles that are recappable. We went to our local watering hole to ask them to save us "long necks' but sadly the only ones they have are "greenies" which doesn't sell that well. We are enjoying drinking a higher quality beer at home than was our norm in the pursuit of refillable bottles!!

We had inherited most of our "brew supplies" from my old beekeeping mentor so costs have been keep down.
 
Chairrock said:
Well we really got the bug. We have started 2 more 6 gallon batches of cyser.
When I bought the yeast for the first batch, which is doing nicely BTW,I bought 2 extra yeasts.

So in addition to the first batch I now have #2 started with Wyeast Dry Mead with a BG of 1.068 ,with 2t of tannin,and 6t of nutrient on 12/18. The cider was 1.051 BG before I added wildflower honey. Doing nicely.

Batch #3 is the same in all details except of a BG of 1.062 and White Labs English Cider yeast. Also doing well , but a bit slower than #1 and #2.

The apple blend is Jonagold,Ida Red,Spy Gold,Northern Spy, and Empire.

We have amped up our purchase of better beer in bottles that are recappable. We went to our local watering hole to ask them to save us "long necks' but sadly the only ones they have are "greenies" which doesn't sell that well. We are enjoying drinking a higher quality beer at home than was our norm in the pursuit of refillable bottles!!

We had inherited most of our "brew supplies" from my old beekeeping mentor so costs have been keep down.
Click to expand...

OK Update ...

Batch One. BG 1.058....today... 1.004 still bubbling every few seconds. Tasty/Fruity,smoothest of 3----16 days

Batch Two.BG 1.068...Today...1.000 one bubble a minute.Bitter/Harsh.9 days

Batch Three ...BG 1.062..Today..1.005 10 seconds bubble...Tasty/Fruity.9 days


All of the batches are drinkable...amazing the different flavors etc.

I now have a 16 ounce glass of a blend of 3 to sip so early in the day..

How long before I should rack to clean carboys for aging/final fermentation?
 
If you think they are good now wait until they clear in a couple of months and they will be outstanding. Dont you have more batches to start and more yeasts to test not to mention you havent even started testing which kind of honey is better :):) WVMJ
 
WVMJack said:
If you think they are good now wait until they clear in a couple of months and they will be outstanding. Dont you have more batches to start and more yeasts to test not to mention you havent even started testing which kind of honey is better :):) WVMJ
Click to expand...


I hope to start one more batch in a few weeks as long as fresh sweet cider is available. If I owned more carboys I would jump on it sooner!

I have about 240 pounds of honey now,it is basic wildflower. I don't have the time to extract during the summer so I get a mix in the fall. You can see the different shades of color/varieties in the supers but they all get mixed together in the extractor.
My favorite spring honey is locust...very light colored.

So many variables, but so far so good. We proceed along absorbing more knowledge every day from so many sources.....

Next is racking,.....
 
We racked batch #2 yesterday. The SG was .996. That was after a 10 day primary fermentation.
After less than 24 hours in a fresh carboy with airlock, the (I think) MLF is going nicely.Already the top 3 inches has cleared and you can almost watch the change. It is bubbling once a minute or so.
The other 2 batches are still at a 5-10 second bubble.

Cheers!
 
I know I can read somewhere on the net how I am doing, but to be honest I would love to have y'all comment honestly and give hints etc. to help me learn.

Perhaps this thread is in the wrong place... my bad and ignorance for starting a thread here when it should have been in a mead/cyser thread. I was a uninformed newbi...
.can a MODERATOR move my thread?
 
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