Summer Cider

Ciders are really fun, really easy, and quite frankly a great drink for the summer time. I did something a little different this time, and I think it turned out really nicely. There are a few things I will probably do different next time.

Ingredients:

• 5 gallons Apple Juice
• 1 pound Light Brown Sugar
• 2 pounds Honey
• 1 pack Champagne yeast
• 4 ounces Oak Chips
• Potassium Sorbate (1/4 teaspoon per gallon) (Optional)
• 2 containers Frozen Apple Juice Concentrate

Instructions:

• Mix together on medium heat one gallon of apple juice with the brown sugar and honey.
• Pour mixture into fermenter with rest of the apple juice.
• Pitch yeast.
• Ferment for about 1-2 weeks.
• Rack to secondary on top of oak chips. Ferment for about one week.
• Let 2 cans of frozen apple juice concentrate thaw completely. Add to the keg or bottling bucket.
• Rack from secondary into keg or bottling bucket on top of thawed concentrate. This will add to the sweetness (this process is called back-sweetening.) In order for the back-sweetening to work, you have to stop the fermentation process, or the yeast will just keep consuming the sugar. Now, there are two things you can do to stop the fermentation process. You can cold shock it, which involves putting the bucket or keg in a very cold location like a refrigerator, which causes the yeast to go dormant. You can also add potassium sorbate. Either way works.

I used potassium sorbate, but I added it to the keg, which I don't think did a lot of good considering I immediately put it in the kegerator to carb. I think next time, I'll add the potassium sorbate in the secondary process so as to avoid a high alcohol content. I don't mind ciders of this ABV, but one around 4-5% is a little nicer. I like the addition of 2 cans of concentrate, but you can add more or less depending on how sweet you want the cider. 

OG:   1.060

FG:    1.000

ABV: 8%

Until Next Time,

RHSC