Fast forward to December. I really fancied getting some cider so spent a lot more time reading the posts. What I came away with was an impression that the results I had been getting from the kits and modifications thereto was pretty much what you get. The experienced brewers were doing it themselves with apple juice. Surely this couldn't produce serious results? It was just going to be cheap plonk, right? There was only one way to find out and that was to give it a go. Having done this let me say, if you're umming and arring like I was, they're right. You CAN produce high quality cider, way better than anything you will get out of a kit, by doing it yourself. It's cheap, it's easy, it tastes excellent and it works. Here's my recipe - give it a go, you won't regret it.
23 litres Aldi 100% apple juice (when you are doing this regularly you can stock up when an offer is on)
1 mug very strong black tea (I brewed it with 5 tsp loose PG Tips)
1 sachet French oak chippings (for vintage flavour)
1 sachet Youngs cider yeast
180ml Youngs wine sweetener
2oz bog standard sugar for priming (in a barrel)
1. Apple juice goes in the fermenting bin. You will need to heat some of it in pans to get a start temperature 18-23C for the whole batch. I found heating 3 litres to boiling gave a start of 22C so that will be a ball park figure for anyone. Get everything well agitated to introduce oxygen.
2. Add tea and French oak chippings - stir in well
3. Add cider yeast as per instructions on the sachet
4. Leave in warm place to ferment. Mine took 10 days to ferment out.
5. When fermentation over syphon to barrel and sweeten with wine sweetener to taste. For those who don't understand, the reason why you are using wine sweetener is because it is non-fermentable. If you add a fermentable sugar to sweeten it will just turn to alcohol in a week or so and you will be back to square one - no sweetness, too dry. Add the sweetener to your own taste by mixing well in the barrel then draw a little sample off to check. I found 180ml was just right for me to give a medium / medium-dry taste.
6. Add priming sugar, mix, seal barrel and place in warm place for two days, then transfer to cool place for 3 weeks.
7. Drink!
My OG was 1049 with a FG of 1002 giving an ABV of 6.8%. The resultant cider is slightly cloudy, has good fizz and excellent flavour. It's as good as a quality bottled vintage cider.
One final thing is to say a big 'thank you' to the Jim's Beer Kit crowd for their postings on TC which encouraged me to give it a go and how to go about it. My recipe has tweaks in it for added flavour. You could do it cheaper but that wasn't my aim. Hope this encourages others to give it a go.
