Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Hard Apple Cider

I've been brewing beer for many years and decided to make some hard apple cider. The apple cider kits that I've seen online are quite expensive.  So this recipe is made using frozen concentrated juice and frozen fruit.  This recipe I'm going to use old orchard frozen concentrate apple juice.

recipe makes 5 gals:
13 12 oz. cans of Old Orchard apple concentrated juice.
3.5 gals of water.
4 lbs. of brown sugar.
~20 oz. of frozen fruit.
1 packet of safale S-04 yeast.

On 12/09/15, I "set" a batch of this cider. In a large stainless steel stock pot I combined 1/2 gal of water,the sugar and liquefied fruit( using a blender), on low heat until all the sugar was dissolved.  Added a gallon of cold water to the fermentation bucket and then added sugar/fruit wort to the bucket. Next I added the 13 cans of frozen apple concentrated juice (ended up using store brand concentrate) to the fermentation bucket and cold water to the 5 gallon mark on the bucket.  After mixing well, I took a hydrometer reading to determined the potential  alcohol content of the finished cider.  That reading was 1.0085 specific gravity.  Water has a specific gravity of 1.0.  Assuming all the sugars will be consumed by the yeast, the reading becomes .0085 and .0085 times 131.25 equals a potential  content of 11% ABV. Then I "pitched" the yeast.

Being a retired engineer, I wanted to know where the correction factor of 131.25 was derived from.  After some internet research I found that 131.25 is a thumb rule for making beer.  Because cider has a higher alcohol content due to the amount of sugars in the wort this correction factor is not totally accurate.  In other words the higher the specific gravity the greater the potential alcohol content.  This can be seen in the chart below.



The equation for the line in this chart is:
y = x * 0.136 - 0.169

where:
y = potential alcohol
x = hydrometer reading

So with this cider, my hydrometer reads out in round numbers 10 -90, we have:

y = 85 * 0.136 - 0.69
   = 11.4 % alcohol








48 hours after setting, it has a sweat smell as seen by the gnat flying near the airlock.

Update 12/24/15: 
It has been over two weeks and it is still fermenting!
some lessons learned:
1) open the juice cans while they are still frozen.
2) maybe use concentrated frozen apple/fruit instead of frozen fruit.
3) check all rubber gaskets on equipment before use.   

12/29/15 Bottled cider:
It's been almost three weeks and the fermentation has stopped.  So I bottled the cider.  Sterilized 18 bottles and added 1 teaspoon of sugar to each bottle to carbonated the cider.  It should take about another two weeks to carbonate.  Before bottling I took another hydrometer reading and tasted the cider.  Taste was good and the hydrometer read zero.  Meaning all the sugars were converted to alcohol making the cider 11.4% ABV.