Brewing - Brewing Cider

[Mammon]

O.K. I'm going to brew some cider this autumn and I was wondering if anyone here has any tips or could recommend a good recipe or website.

I've brewed stuff before but it tasted bloody awful. I've got the equipment and know the basics.

Cheers.

[HorseBucket]

I hear beers harder to make than wine or mead. I have a good book on brewing I can upload it if you need it.

[Mammon]

Does the book cover cider? I live in the country and so have access to lots of apples.

Cheers.

[HorseBucket]

Its a book on winemaking actually not brewing. Yeah this book covers cider here it is
http://rapidshare.de/files/39982715/...aking.pdf.html
it has about 30 different wine recipes at the end. Tells you how to make wine out of all sorts of crazy shit like nettles and tea.

Heres the cider recipe

CIDER OR PERRY
Cider is made from apples, perry from pears.
Strictly speaking, only natural sugar of the fruit should be employed and no sugar
should be added.
A press or juice extractor is essential. Put the fruit in a tub or polythene dustbin
and crush it with a "masher," a heavy balk of timber. Then express the juice by means of
a press or by wrapping the fruit a little at a time in a stout cloth and running it through a
mangle. Collect the juice in a jar, stand it on a tray in a warm place (about 70 degrees F.)
and add yeast. Invert a small glass over the top of the jar. For a few days the jar will froth
over and must be kept topped up, but when the ferment quietens fit a fermentation lock
and proceed as for any other wine.

and nettle wine. Madness

NETTLE WINE
Ingredients:
2 quarts young nettle tops 1 gallon water
4 lb. white sugar 2 lemons
½ oz. root ginger Yeast; yeast nutrient
Method:
Pick only the tops of the nettles, rinse them in water, and drain. Simmer them in
some of the water with the bruised ginger and lemon peel (being careful to exclude any
white pith) for forty-five minutes. Strain, and make the liquor up to a gallon by adding
more water. Pour this hot liquor over the sugar, add the juice of the lemons and the yeast
nutrient, and stir until the sugar dissolves, and when the liquor has cooled to 70 degrees
F. add the yeast, preferably a general purpose wine yeast. Keep the crock closely covered
in a warm place, and after four days stir thoroughly and transfer the liquor to fermentation
vessels and fit air locks. When the wine begins to clear, rack off into fresh bottles, and
leave for another three months before the final bottling.

[Mammon]

Nice one. I might even give that nettle one a go. I've still got to get all my old equipment together, though.

A quick warning: I once also came across a recipe for tea wine. I made it. It was absolutely hideous.

Slightly off topic, but, have you ever made a wine out of wierd stuff?

[HorseBucket]

Haha that doesn't surprise me. I've seen recipes for onion wine I can't imagine how that crap must taste. The weirdest thing I made wine out of was cranberry juice. It wasn't actually that bad. Me and my friends came in one night steamboats and decided to drink the cranberry wine and everyone liked it.

[Mammon]

Yeah, some of the crap I've drunk when wasted can make me wince even now. This French moonshine stuff my parents were given but hated so much they gave it to me was so harsh each sip was like a slap in the face. I used to drink it after coming in from the pub. Firewater, and it tasted fucking awful.

Not to say your wine was harsh.

Quinces make a nice wine, I've found.

[nEone]

I've made all sorts of weird wines. If you do gallon-batches - it's not such a big deal when they go horribly wrong.

That said, never throw them out - sometimes it's just a matter of needing more time.

I made a batch of beet-root wine that is the most remarkable fuschia color - and only has a minimal hint of earthiness to it...but retains a really lovely fruity body.

I made a nectarine wine that was apparently WAY more sugary that I thought - and ended up being VERY highly carbonated - almost like champagne. One of my bottle blew up. But it's just a fantastic wine.

I made strawberry wine hoping for a nice light summer wine - and ended up with a very bitter/dry wine...it's not bad...but it's not really very good either.

I made a carrot wine that smelled great going into the fermenter...coming out though, it smelled like garbage. Not Just bad-smelling...actual garbage. It tasted that way too. Six months later, I opened another bottle not knowing what it was (I'm lazy with labels)...and lo and behold...it's like a crisp German reisling, with a distinctly vegetable undertone. very nice. And a really pretty muted orange color too.

I've got a persimmon wine that's just waiting to get bottled.

It's plum/peach/nectarine season again and I'm hoping to replicate the nectarine wine, with a little lower carbonation level.

I like to make at least one gallon of wine a month. I go to the farmer's market -and whatever is in season and perfectly ripe, I'll buy 5-7lbs and try making wine with it. It's not ready for 6months to a year...but that's ok, it's fun to try...and when you find one that works...then you can ramp up to 5G batches and impress yer friends.

[Mammon]

I made strawberry wine hoping for a nice light summer wine - and ended up with a very bitter/dry wine...it's not bad...but it's not really very good either

Yeah, that happened to me when I made a peach wine. I thought it was going to be a bit sweet but it was dry as hell.

eNone, could you give me your standard technique for making the wines? I know the basics of brewing from the stuff I did years ago but everyone's got their own ideas.

Cheers.

[nEone]

Well - to be perfectly frank....my methods are incredibly unscientific.

I buy whatever fruit is ripe - 4-6lbs worth - wash, cut and de-seed/stem. Then I throw the fruit into a big pot on the stove. I use a potato masher to crush the fruit, stir in another 3-5lbs of sugar and a gallon of water on medium/high heat until dissolved - I bring to a high simmer then transfer everything to a 1.5G primary bucket, let cool - pitch the yeast when it's down to room temp and mix in a bunch of air with a plastic slotted spatula, seal it up with an airlock, ferment for three-four weeks, rack off of the pulp to a 1G Apple Cider jug and then rack monthly off of the lees (dead yeast) until clear.

I'll often add a yeast nutrient...but that's about it. I don't mess around with any clearing agents or other additions...sometimes I'll add a cup of strong black tea for tannins if the wine is a red/dark wine (like beet). I figure, people have been making wine for thousands of years without the benefit of fancy ingredients...so I can manage without them too...particularly at a gallon or three per batch.

After the exploding nectarine wine, I've been very careful to let everything ferment out completely before bottling. I'm not a huge fan of carbonated wines like champagne, so it's never really my intention to repeat that product...delicious as it is.

nEone added 4 Minutes and 39 Seconds later...

Oh...since this thread is about Cider....

I'm going to try this this weekend....I'm going to buy a jug of really delicious spiced cider that we get at the grocery store - 100% juice, with cinnamon/cloves...no artificial additives - open the jug long enough to throw in a good beer-yeast, cap it with an airlock and see what I get.

Cider is a lot like lambics...traditionally they're made by catching wild yeasts...which is fancy talk for "oh, shit, we let the cider sit uncovered for too long."

I'll let you know how it goes.