Join us for a Cider Brewing Demonstration and see the Show Notes below!
Making Summer Ciders LIVE Show Notes
- Welcome Everyone - Thank You for joining
- Brief overview of Summer Cider
- Announce that we’re actually making cider
- What are we drinking?
- Tell us what you’re drinking
- Store Updates
- Judging for NVBC starts tomorrow! Thank you to everyone who entered and volunteered to help
- BrewChatter Rentals is LIVE and running! Rent the canner or a jockey box any time!
Making a Summer Cider
- Talk first about the Bee’s Knees Recipe - both apple and pear
- What the ingredients are actually doing
- Difference between a wine base and actual juice
- Wine base is an emulsion of fruit in water - you have to add sugar (or honey) to get your gravity to a reasonable level
- Juice from concentrate leaves about 1.002 residual sugar
- Fresh pressed or not from concentrate dries all the way out, no matter what (.996)
- Acid Blend
- Helps balance the acidity in the finished product (we’re not using this in the simple cider we’re doing today)
- It’s a ⅓-⅓-⅓ Blend of Malic, Tartaric and Citric Acid. Thought to be an easy and tasty blend of the acids
- Acid balance is the key to cider and wine. Too much acidity, and it tastes tart / sour, not enough and it taste bland and lifeless
- Fermaid K and O
- Complete yeast nutrient - you should be using this in every fermentation, no matter what, and more in mead
- Pectic Enzyme
- Pectinase is an enzyme that breaks down pectins, and most fruits have tons of pectins. This will help break down the fruit, and help the final clarity
- Light Toasted Oak Chips
- These are for tannins, which help add structure and body to a wine that doesn’t have any residual sugar left over like beer does
- Yeast
- Cider strains are like wine strains, and specifically geared towards fructose fermentations
- Whatever yeast you use, because it’s all simple sugar, it will dry all the way out.
- Choose a yeast who’s character you like, then adjust by back sweetening or adjusting acids after fermentation - or both
- Potassium Sorbate
- Stabilizer. This encapsulates any yeast or wild bacteria so that they cannot function - metabolize - sugar or anything else.
- This won’t stop an active fermentation, but will prevent future fermentation
- Dive into Todays Recipe
- The simple cider is slightly different from the kit, but not by much
- Today we are using a lager yeast with the Brewjacket Immersion Pro
- Why? We want to see the difference in a lagered cider
- We want to see the effect that it has on acidity
- We want to run the brewjacket through it’s paces
- Today’s Recipe
- 5 gallon Cheap store bought juice from concentrate so we don’t have to back - sweeten
- 32 oz home made Elderberry syrup (see the recipe on our website under the Elderberries description if you want to make your own)
- Boiled down 1 lb dried elderberries
- Added about ½ lb honey
- Used only light ginger, about half of a fresh root
- No other spices
- Used Irish whisky to fortify slightly and make shelf stable
- Fermaid and Dap
- Yeast nutrients and available nitrogen for our cider
- 2 lbs Wildflower Honey, courtesy of our friends at Great Basin Food Co-op
- No other sugars
- No added water - all juice
- R.J. does the process step by step, and Josh and R.J. bullshit back and forth while explaining the process and why they’re doing things the way that they are
- Go over the Brewjacket, the science behind it, and why we’re using the rod sleeve
- Talk about making modifications to different flavors
- Adding fruit or fruit puree
- How to pasteurize fruit at 150 for 15 minutes
- Adding spices
- Heat extraction
- Ethanol extraction
- Using different and / or complex sugars to add to the overall complexity of the finished product
- Back-sweetening
- Stabilize first
- Some people like to add the same juice to back sweeten
- We like honey or another complex sugar, like a compote or reduction to add to the overall complexity of the finished product - We find that using the same juice can taste flat or like watered down apple juice with alcohol and makes it un-balanced
- Talk about titration and acid balance
- Titration kit and how to decide where you want you cider
- Most ciders come out about the acidity level of a Sauv blanc (Total Acidity level about 0.7 - 0.9), and mellow over the course of 6 mo to a year
- Most white wines have a fermented pH of 3.1 - 3.5 depending on variety
- For comparison, in cider the average is 3.2 - 3.8 pH
- You can adjust the total acids in your cider by titration, or adjust slightly just using your pH meter if you want to keep it simple
- We generally adjust by flavor, and adjust acid up a very small amount at a time
- Touch on pressing fresh apples
- Blending varieties
- Potassium metabisulfite or pasteurization
- K-Meta is WAY easier
- Pasteurizing is more work, but the most natural way to get rid of wild yeast and bacteria