The hard stuff

Now that I have my grapes crushed and the yeast bubbling away, I am thinking hard apple cider.

Has anyone made hard apple cider? I would guess it is made the same way wine is. I have looked for a recipe both on the internet and at my local home brew store and have found them to be somewhat simplistic, or I am tiring to make it harder than it need to be. Would you suggest making it like wine or the just leave the juice out in a warm place until it changes?

Roy

Reply to
Roy boy
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What kind of grapes are we talking about here?

SG Brix

Reply to
sgbrix

isn't there a methanol issue with the fiber contained in apple cider?

Reply to
billb

The recipes you're reading are correct. The difference between hard cider and apple wine IS the simplicity. To make a "traditional" hard cider, you want a low sugar start, with the fairly high acid level, fermented with a cider yeast (ale yeast if you can't find it). You end up with an alcohol level intermediate between ale and wine, tart tasting, that doesn't need more than a few months aging to reach its peak. Start now, and you'll have something excellent for your winter holidays.

Do a google groups search in this forum. I had some fair results last year with store-bought cider and some EC-1118 lees. The cat's meow -

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- has a wide range of recipies. Read them all, and see what you can cobble together to get the cider you want.

Reply to
ralconte

Watch out when using the Cat's Meow database... it's compiled from all sorts of fourms over the years, and although there's some good recipes in there, many have never even been tried and some are outright trash. I think the best advice for cider is keep it simple.

Cheers, Travis

Reply to
trav77

I believe they are vitis vinifera from trying to match up the leaf. I have not been able to find what the common name is yet. The only thing I have found is a French winery that says that it uses them but give no more information. The grape is small ranging from the size of a large pea to the size of a large cranberry. They are a dark purple color when ripe and had a

23 brix when picked.

This is the first time I have done grapes and I am surprised to see how the yeast is causing a churning of the must from the amount of gas released. Last night I tried to slow down the yeast by ceiling the bucket and putting the air lock on it, but there was so much gas being produced that all the water from the lock was blown out of it. The must then plugged the hole and started putting pressure on the lid. I ended up taking half of the 5 gallons and putting it in the fridge to cool it off slowing down the yeast.

Roy

Reply to
Roy boy

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Have a look at this, and learn.

Reply to
Stephen SG

"Last night I tried to slow down the yeast by ceiling the bucket and putting the air lock on it, but there was so much gas being produced that all the water from the lock was blown out of it"

Be careful with this. You can run into 2 problems:

1) If the must blows over the airlock, you can get contamination problems.

2) If the yeast begins to choke on carbon dioxide (ie it can't release fast enough through the airlock) and gets too stressed, you can end up with H2S, hydrogen sulphide.

Reply to
CJ

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