Hard Cider

For the month of November I'm going to be working at the New York NWS office. Unfortunately that means I can't brew ....sad.... However, that I can still do some cider!

Leah's parents came down to visit before I left, and they brought 9 gallons of unpasteurized cider with them from a cider presser in MI. The sweet cider tasted great. Hopefully that translates over to a good hard cider, however in the most recent issue of BYO, I read that sweet cider doesn't usually make good hard cider. We shall see.

Here's the recipe I came up with:
4 1/2 gallons unpastuerized cider
1 lb buckwheat honey
1 pt maple syrup
1 lb clover honey
2 cups brown sugar
1 pkg EC-1118 Lalvin Dry Yeast

OG of Cider: 1.050
OG of Cider w/ all fermentables: 1.090

First, we added 1 gallon of the cider into a pot on the stove, and warmed it up to 160 degrees. We then added the honey, syrup, and sugars. After the sugars have dissolved, we cooled down the mixture, and added it along with the other 3 1/2 gallons of cider to the carboy.

I've read that by not pastuerizing unpastuerized cider, the results can be unpredictable, however the best yeast to use for cider is generally the natural cider yeast already found in the cider. I'm hoping that by adding in a packet of wine yeast, the wine yeast will work witht the wild yeast to produce a nice enough product. However this is a big if. For our first cider though, I think it will be an interesting experiment.

Another problem may be that our cider may turn to vinegar. Bacteria turns cider to vinegar, Yeast turns cider to hard cider. However bacteria cannot survive in a CO2 environment. Hopefully the bacteria is poisoned by the yeast producing tons of CO2.