Hard Cider

The fall has always been my favorite season.  I love the cooler weather, the crisp air, cutting firewood, bringing in the year’s harvest and making wine and cider.  This past year we did a few new things in preparation for cider making. 

1.  We went shopping around for apples and got 15 bushels from two different orchards at really good prices.  This is the most ambitious we've been in relation to quantity.  

2.  We bought this amazing apple crusher that does a half ton\hr.  Gone are the days of having to quarter apples one by one before running them through the table-mounted hand crusher that would take all day to do 5 bushels.   Now we can load apples into the top of the apple mil and watch this thing turn them into a mash in a matter of seconds.  It’s the most wonderful thing since we got heat on the 3rd floor.  

3.  For my birthday my wife bought me a #45 press.  I also have a #25 press, which is perfect if you are making 6 gallons of something.    When it comes to cider we make quite a lot more.  In the past with the hand crusher this really wasn’t too much of problem as the bottle neck was during the crush process not the press.  Now that we have the new electric mill the bottle neck would have been the press.  Subsequently, the #45 while very large in comparison and works a lot nicer for the volume of cider we are making now.

This thing is so freaking awesome!

Apples

Pipin, Cameo, Henley Gold, Cripin, Staymen, AK Black and Russet. 

Process

10.25.14	Crush and pressed 15 bushels that yielded 35 gallons of juice. SG 1.051 about 7.5% expected alcohol.
10.27.14	Picked yeast, experimented with two brands of Champagne yeast.  Red Star v. Lavin.  The Lavin created a much slower fermentation.
11.7.14	SG 1.031, taste testing proved to be a nice apple flavor.  Racked off
11.23.14	SG 0.098 Racked & bottled 13 cases of 22 oz bottles

New toys, #45 press and electric crusher.

Sulfite bath prior to the crush.

This is how you make awesome sauce.

The press

After the press.

A reward for the day's hard work - last year's cider.

Almost of cube yard of pomace.

A little experiment with champagne yeast strains.

The rack off 

32 gallons of sweet smelling cider bubbling away in the kitchen.

Result

A still, French style cider with good flavor, very drinkable without being over done in terms of alcohol content that we had achieved in previous iterations.  I do prefer the carbonation that is produced during the secondary fermentation (not malolactic).  I think the only thing that would need to be done differently in this year’s batch is that the cider got chill proofed a little too soon.  Chill proofing stabilizes the cider (or wine) by killing off any lingering yeast or bacteria.  Ostensibly, if we had left it out of the fridge a little longer, we’d have a different result.  Nonetheless, it’s still good and I am working on consistency and perfecting the craft.