The Recipe
Based on the recipe presented in BrewingTV ep. 67, but modified a bit.
Ingredients
- 1 gallon of Roundy’s 100% apple cider
- 1 Cup pure Florida cane sugar
- 1 gram Red Star “Cote des Blancs” active dry wine yeast
- 1/2 tsp yeast energizer
- 2 tsp yeast nutrient
Yield
About 1 gallon
Process
- Add yeast to warm water to activate it
- Add 1/2 of yeast nutrient, energizer and sugar to 1 gallon of cider
- Add yeast and gently mix
- Cap the jug with and airlock and store for 24 hours
- Add rest of yeast nutrient and put back in storage to let ferment for about a week (until there is no more activity)
- Rack to secondary for aging and clarifying
Notes
- Cider was a little cold so I had to get it warmed up to room temp – remember to always take out your juice from the refridgerator (if you put it in there in the first place…)
- Need to mix sugar a little more maybe – I think there might have been a little not dissolved
- I put the nutrient and energizer in late (forgot to do it, duh!) – 6 days late, to be exact. There was a violent reaction :)
Pictures and Progress!
Sorry, forgot to take pictures!
But, the OG was 1.060, and came down to 1.002 at bottling – putting the numbers into a calculator, it comes out to about 7.6% ABV and 202 calories per 12oz.
I actually did a second batch of this (0x0003) – changed the yeast to ‘Pasteur Champagne’ Red Star, and used Apple Valley apple cider (hand pressed at a local orchard).
I also decided to test out back-sweetening – I back-sweetened 3 bottles with Old Orchard Apple Raspberry frozen concentrate (about 2 tbsp worth), and left one bottle unsweetened.
The sweetened ones tasted fantastic – nice and carbed. No pictures of that batch either!