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Apple cider/wine

I have a friend that has an apple tree and I am going to get several bushels from him because he wants me to try to make wine and cider.

Now, I am going to attempt 3, 6 gallon batches. I have been looking over a variety of recipes and I have a few questions.

First, I see recipes talking about juicing is better than using the actual apple pieces. Does this mean I want to peel the apples and not use the skins? I was planning to use an automatic peeler/corer and then put the skins in with the fermentation with some pectic enzyme.

Second, the recipe I see for cider has me adding a 1/4 cup of dissolved sugar per gallon at the end of fermentation, then bottling it with screw caps or champagne style. I assume this is because fermentation is going to restart and you don't want to risk blowing out the corks. What do they mean by "dissolved" sugar?

For medium bodied to full bodied wines, I see a range of 8 lbs to 24 lbs of apples per gallon. Is this right? an I go by hanging weight, or should I go by weight after peeled and cored?

Next, recipes call for a variety of apples, this seems to be to mix acidities. Is it going to be much of a problem that I am doing this from the same tree?

Reply to
Adam Lang
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Use Stayman (winesap) apples. Very tart apples make the best flavor for wine. I use 70 to 80 pounds for a 60 gal. batch. I like to do it the old fashioned way, core them slice them into 6 or 8 pieces (when done like this a 5 gal bucket weighs exactly 30 pounds) dump them right into the barrel for primary fermentation. 110 pounds of sugar gets you to about 15%, 10 or 12 pounds of raisens, set the acidity & let er go. This year I'm gonna experiment with pectic enzyme for the first time, understand with apples the starch content is up ther. Good luck.

Reply to
PA-ter

Barrel? Is this implying you use oak barrels for your fermentation of this?

Reply to
Adam Lang

Plastic, obtained from a local fruit processing plant, 60 gal., usually yields 45 gal potable wine.

Reply to
PA-ter

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