Method: My wife and I find a bunch of golden delicious apples, and we press them with a cider press. Hand-crank, takes awhile but you'll build muscles you didn't know you had or needed.
I fortify quite a bit actually; for about 4 gallons of fresh cider, I add 10lbs white sugar. None of the yeasts I've used have been able to take this dry, so the final residual sweetness is a bit different every year. Final abv in the 14-15% range, depending on the hardiness of the yeast. No fermentation management used whatsoever; the recipe taught to us was a pitch and forget method. We'd get more active in managing the ferment if there seemed a reason to do so, but with the amount of nutrients added by the cider, it just hasn't been necessary for us. We've started with OGs around 1.135, and finished out around 1.02 with more consistency than I would have expected, knowing what I do now about fermentation management.
No mixing of varieties is really necessary. I'm sure you can get more/different/better/worse flavors imparted by mixing various apple types, but we've found that using pure golden delicious cider has absolutely amazing results with our recipe, such as it is.
I reread what I wrote earlier, seems a little inflammatory if taken incorrectly. My point is that if you're looking at moving to pressing apples from using store-bought/pasteurized/otherwise treated juice/cider, there is no need to jump straight into using the more expensive varieties of apples. You will get consistent and very good results from the more basic apples, such as golden delicious. The insinuation that you shouldn't, can't, or wouldn't want to use them for this purpose is simply incorrect.
With regard to cider sweetness, well, I'm not sure how much sweeter you might want it. The 700lbs of golden delicious apples we pressed on Sunday turned into 35 gallons of cider with an sg of 1.05. More than enough sweet for me
. Note: that works out to 20lbs per gallon of cider produced, using a manually-operated cider press. Big screw-type, no hydraulics here.
Hope this helps.
I fortify quite a bit actually; for about 4 gallons of fresh cider, I add 10lbs white sugar. None of the yeasts I've used have been able to take this dry, so the final residual sweetness is a bit different every year. Final abv in the 14-15% range, depending on the hardiness of the yeast. No fermentation management used whatsoever; the recipe taught to us was a pitch and forget method. We'd get more active in managing the ferment if there seemed a reason to do so, but with the amount of nutrients added by the cider, it just hasn't been necessary for us. We've started with OGs around 1.135, and finished out around 1.02 with more consistency than I would have expected, knowing what I do now about fermentation management.
No mixing of varieties is really necessary. I'm sure you can get more/different/better/worse flavors imparted by mixing various apple types, but we've found that using pure golden delicious cider has absolutely amazing results with our recipe, such as it is.
I reread what I wrote earlier, seems a little inflammatory if taken incorrectly. My point is that if you're looking at moving to pressing apples from using store-bought/pasteurized/otherwise treated juice/cider, there is no need to jump straight into using the more expensive varieties of apples. You will get consistent and very good results from the more basic apples, such as golden delicious. The insinuation that you shouldn't, can't, or wouldn't want to use them for this purpose is simply incorrect.
With regard to cider sweetness, well, I'm not sure how much sweeter you might want it. The 700lbs of golden delicious apples we pressed on Sunday turned into 35 gallons of cider with an sg of 1.05. More than enough sweet for me
. Note: that works out to 20lbs per gallon of cider produced, using a manually-operated cider press. Big screw-type, no hydraulics here.Hope this helps.
