Make Your Own Hard Cider

We followed the directions and the cider is in the carboy but there is no bubbling! It has been 4 days now. One thing that we did incorreclty was add the activated yeast before the cider came to room temperature. I am guesssing it was around 100 F. Could this be the problem. Should I be patient? Or should I crack the container and add more yeast. Please advise.

Marina,
You can ferment apple nectar (thick, cloudy apple juice rendered with heat), to make either cider or wine. It will taste good, but will never really clear because heat sets pectin crystals. Eventually they do seem to form a harmless sediment at the bottom of wine bottles.

One of the good things about working with nectar is that it is reasonably sterile if you protect it from contamination until it cools. This makes it possible to ferment into cider or wine without using sulfites, IMHO.

I cooked part of my apples to high, and they became apple sauce, can I still make apple cider?

I started my cider on Saturday, and it looked good Monday. Now one of the containers no longer has foam, but the other does. Should I be concerned? Both were foamy and looking good. Also, my balloons are grapefruit sized now, should I be putting another hole in the balloon?

Thanks!

I prefer to serve it chilled...

There are no rules...try it and see what you prefer!

you can ferment less liquid in your primary ferment bucket...and there should be extra room for foam and bubbles. I use a 6 gallon pail. It is really important that if you do a secondary ferment you have as little air as possible between the liquid and the airlock. Iuse glass carboys in 6,5,and 3 gallon sizes. good luck

Kemmer can do the primary ferment in the 5 gallon bucket then syphon into a 3 gallon glass carboy. These are available at wine making supply stores.

Two questions:

Can I adjust the ingedients to make 3 gallons instead of 5 and if I decide to do this can I still use a bucket made for 5 gallons? I may want to make 5 gallons in the future.

What is the best way to serve it? Chilled or hot?

David, you had also asked when you can tell if the yeast is dead. You can watch your airlock to see if there is any action and you can also tell by the amount of sediment accumulating on the bottom of the carboy after a clean racking. Again you may have to leave the wine in the carboy a month before noticing the accumulation of sediment/dead yeast when not using potassium sorbate. With the potassium sorbate method it stops the yeast from having the ability to reproduce and ferment. You still need to let the wine sit in the carboy for a couple of weeks after stabalizing and sweetening, before bottling.

There are two ways to sweeten your wine back. One is to use potassium sorbate (1/2 tsp per gal) along with sulfite (if you want to use sulfites-follow recommendation of supplier). This method stabalizes the wine. This can all be picked up at your local homebrew supply store or online. Ask their advice also. The other method is to gradually sweeten back a little at a time in the carboy, the wine will ferment slightly more, sweeten a little more until the alcohol content is strong enough that the yeast will not be able to tolerate the level. This method is time consuming, you will need to be rack again, and the alcohol content can get slightly out of balance but is a more natural method. The potassium sorbate method is typical of almost all commercial wines from my understanding. The potassium sorbate/sulfite method gives you much more control over the process.

This article was very helpful in making my first batch of hard cider. I do have a question though. When siphoning the hard cider from a 5 gallon carboy (1st fermentation) to the 3 gallon carboy for the 2nd fermentation, we tasted the hard cider. It is good, but very dry. I found that adding a sweetener (honey or brown sugar) made it very tasty. Therefore I would like to back-sweeten the hard cider after the 2nd fermentation and before bottling. If I add the honey or brown sugar to the 3 gallon carboy, will fermentation start again? How can I tell if the yeast is “dead”? Thank you for your help.

I've been homebrewing hard cider for quite a few years. I've tried many tricks with cysers(hard cider made with honey) and other straight hard ciders. I have followed recipes as they are written but of course the fun part is playing with different things on your own. I have added cinnamon sticks, nutmeg (in small spice bags), oak chips, raisins, dates, etc. and in all combination. My favorite combo is honey and brown sugar. I have made a very sweet cyser/cider with 5lbs of honey and 2lbs of brown sugar to 6 gallons of cider. Initially the alcohol was out of balance with a strong burning(hot feel). So today with all the talk about cider and my children and I actually going to participate in a cider pressing today, I had to break out my now two yr old cyser. It is really sweet, dessert wine status, and the alcohol burn has really diminished. Time is a huge factor!
Two things I have learned is that maple sugar does not work well and to rack off the lees as soon as possible! You would think the combination of cider and maple would be good but the maple sugar does not ferment well at all! I had to dump 6 gallons of cider. Also leaving the cider on the lees after the primary fermentation quickly imparts some off tastes.
Another trick I have done is to sweeten back the cider with an organic concentrated apple juice to give some extra body and nice apple flavor. Use organic and make sure there are no strange additives if you use a standard apple juice concentrate. I have not used it to carbonate, not sure how it would work.
The main ingredient in the recipes is to have fun!

We made hard cider but it was a lot different process than what you describe. Here's what we did:

We made the cider with our press. Strained it into a plastic gallon water jug. Left the lid loose and let the jug sit on the kitchen counter for 3 or 4 days. Put it in the fridge. Took it out a week or so later and tasted it. It was...interesting, but not hard. Left it out at room temp for another day. Put it back in the fridge and waited another week; tasted it again. Awesome! Fizzy, light, a little kick (but not much, I'll admit--just good).

I know it won't work every time--we will end up with vinegar sometimes too. But we've got gallons and gallons of cider and this was so easy and so good, I'm willing to gamble and not fuss over airlocks, etc. I doubt early farmers did either. (Course, they all died younger...)

Hello, amanda. Typically, the packets say that one packet is sufficient to make five gallons of yeast. But dry wine yeast is fairly cheap (typically less than $1/packet) and using two packets has a few advantages: 1) if one of the packets is no good, the other packet should be able to get the job done; 2) two packets will provide, typically, twice the number of viable yeast cells, enabling the yeast to more easily dominate any other microbes in the cider and 3) ferment the cider much more quickly. So, while you can use one packet, I recommend using two per five gallons of cider.

I noticed that the recipe calls for two packets of yeast. Each package is enough for 5 gallons. Is this correct?
Two packets for 5 gallons?
Thanks
Amanda

I would caution your readers and future cider makers to add a good deal more sugar/honey than recommended in your article. I have been brewing cider for about 5 years now and always underestimate the power of brewing yeast. At least 5 lbs of sugar/honey should be added to a 5 gallon batch and preferably a mixture of both. Don't hesitate to go a little crazy with the ingredients; try adding raisins, honey, nutmeg, molasses, brown, white, or raw cane sugar, each will give you a kaleidoscope of flavors and ultimately give your brew a personal touch. That being said, I would almost always recommend killing off the native yeasts as specific brewing yeasts will leave you with a much more crisp, clean tasting cider in the long run. Have fun, and keep brewing.

Tried my first batch, a little..... dry.

It was a pleasure to read your article on home fermentation as this
has been one of my favorite hobbies for a couple of decades. I
started home brewing while living in northeast Texas where there
are many berry growers and orchards. I would like to add a couple
of suggestions. I was glad to see that you emphasize clarification,
but when I teach beginners I like to place more emphasis on very
careful siphoning to leave the yeast in the bottom. I have come to
recognize the taste of yeast and it’s one of the most common
mistakes made by beginners who are eager to start drinking their
new wine, cider or mead. You have to sacrifice a little to get a
better beverage. I must object to your recommendation to use a
plastic bucket. I have learned that some plastics will “out-gas”
chemicals that are toxic. You’ll need a degree in Chemistry to know
exactly which poly-vinyl-blah-blah-blah is safe, so it’s best to
stay away from all of them. But I only learned that recently. Early
on I learned that the fermentation process of transforming fructose
into ethanol includes chemical reactions that actually loosen
plastic molecules from inside of the container. It may be the
ethanol itself, so it’s best to use glass whenever possible. It’s
also easier to sterilize and sanitize glass, as plastic doesn’t’
really stand up to extremely hot water and bleach. It’s also
common, when tasting a beginner’s first wine to taste disagreeable
“flavor” of plastic contamination. Once it’s in there, no amount of
settling and clarifying will ever remove it. The other advantage of
using glass is that it’s easier to see the bottom of your siphon
hose and know that you’re not transferring the yeast from your
fermenter into your storage bottles. This makes the clarification
process go more quickly. I recommend to beginners that they start
by buying fruit juice in a one gallon glass bottle. Your local
wine-maker’s supplier will have a fermentation lock stopper that
fits this bot

This is 3rd effort at begetting a cider I knew when in Glastonbury
England.It was sweet and heavy, at festivals we never needed a tent
just a load of jugs of cider around a large fire we would pass the
jugs and then ultimately pass out with little or no hangovers .
This latest effort is 6 galls unpastuerised Connecticut cider after
racking is now 5 galls. OG was 1.045 now at FG is 1,000 [ way too
dry ] and as hazy as a Montreal morning on a cold winters day.I
will boil some Irish Moss with some of the mother brew to clear But
how do I sweeten the batch ? Splendor ?? Honey Yumm corn sugar /
brown sugar --how much when? Sorry to whimp out on this but this
effort needs some help Cheers from a scouse Brit Dec 1st 07 Andrew

hey thanks for all the great info. i just got my cider and yeast
and its been bubbling away for about a week now, i'm estatic to see
what i can make!

Marc- Author of the article here. Thanks for your feedback.
Regarding priming with cider, I've done it before and it works OK.
Using a quart to prime five gallons, however, is really too much.
Eight fluid ounces (twelve, tops) of heat-treated juice or cider
should be plenty to get the batch sparkling. Regarding using
unheated cider to prime and the spoilage conditions in fermented
cider, I have to disagree. Acetobacter, if given an opportunity,
will definitely establish itself in finished cider. In fact,
acetobacter prefer that environment because they ferment the
alcohol into acetic acid -- vinegar. Acetobacter also require some
oxygen to live, but even the little bit of oxygen in the headspace
of bottles is enough to get a bacterial infection going if you've
inoculated the finished cider with unsanitary priming solution. To
me, it's not worth the risk.

thank you for sharing the apple cider info. We usually have a good
apple crop in arkansas so I am going to be on the lookout for the
next roadside Cider stand so I can get started.

rather than carbonate with sugar, why not just use a quart of fresh
cider (ideally filtered through cheesecloth). The sugars will be
fermented the same and you'll get more "fresh apple" flavor. You
could treat that cider with the same "heat but don't boil"
approach, but after fermentation the conditions in the cider are
not really suitable for spoilage bacteria. Wild yeasts could still
be an issue.