First time brewing hard cider.
Ingredients
5 gallons of apple juice (Pastured pure juice, no ascorbic acid etc)
2 lbs of dextrose (To give punch)
WLP 775 Yeast (Considered to give a clean cidery finish)
1 teaspoon Fermaid K (To assist in fermentation)
Mixed in and stirred let stand at 63F - 68F for 10 days. Kegged and pressurized to 20 PSI for 10 days.
It took about 2 days for active fermentation to begin. Then a slow steady fermentation happened for about 8 days.
Dec 22nd - Added 32 oz (5% of total batch) of apple juice to sweeten batch. Added 1 crushed Camden Tablet to the apple juice to stop fermentation. Kegged to 40psi.
OG of Apple Juice 1.035
FG 1.005
Calculated ABV 3.1%
Dextrose of 2 lbs adds 2.4% ABV
Plus 2 lbs of dextrose
Total ABV 5.5%
April 21 2014 - What I've learned is that the final product plays heavily on the quality and flavour of your apple juice. The results of this cider are fine. It tastes like a dry apple juice with a kick. With the sweetness gone the apple flavours are simple and not impressive. I stopped fermentation with Camden tablets and then added some original apple juice to sweeten this up a bit. Next time I would skip the Costco juice and head out to an orchard and get some freshly squeezed apple juice and add the yeast to it at the orchard. I would be looking for a darker juice that I liked the flavour to begin with. This is hogging a valuable keg. I hope it gets hot here soon so I can start serving this more.
May 24 2014 - Ok. Poured some from the keg the other night and I'd have to say the aging has improved this to what I would call a nice clean crisp cider. Nothing to write home about but still very good. A good friend gave me about 40 Martinelli's Sparking Apple Cider bottles. I will be bottling the keg today.
Note: Interesting the bottle capper has reversible metal clampers which allow you to cap the larger Martinelli's bottles.
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