Hard Apple Cider

• Total Time: 2784 hrs
• Prep Time: 0 mins
• Cook Time: 2784 hrs

Ingredients:

Serves: 10-16

Yield: 1.0 gallon

• 4 ½ liters fresh apple juice (no preservatives)
• ½-1 lb sugar (not more than 2 lbs)
• ½ teaspoon pectic enzyme powder
• 1 teaspoon acid blend
• ¼ teaspoon grape tannin
• ½ teaspoon yeast energizer
• 2 campden tablets
• 1 packet all purpose wine yeast

Directions:

1. crush and dissolve campden tablets in a cup of warm water and mix well with the FRESH apple juice in your primary fermenter.
2. Let stand over-night. Mix in all other ingredients except yeast making sure everything is dissolved, then sprinkle yeast over top of juice and cover with plastic sheet and ferment 3 to 5 days.
3. Rack (siphon) into secondary fermenter and attach air lock.
4. Rack again in 3 weeks.
5. When all fermentation is finished, rack into a clean vessel and add 2 oz of white sugar and gently stir well.
6. (I usually put the sugar into a bit of water and dissolve it first by boiling it in the microwave) When sugar is well mixed, bottle and age 3 months.
7. This will give you a crisp, carbonated hard cider.
8. * the more sugar you add, the more alcohol you will get, but the longer it will take to ferment. I would recommend from 1/2 to 1 pound per gal/4.5 l and not more than 2 lbs.

Reviews

[cvickers]

You should add the pectic enzyme in any event. Apple juice from any source, store-bought or fresh-squeezed, will be very high in pectin. The pectic enzyme breaks down the pectin naturally and prevents it from clouding the cider.

[mead monster]

Great classic recipe. To answer a simple question here, pasteurized juice is fine, you just can not have "sorbates" in the ingredients, it's what cheap companies put in juices to prevent further fermentation, which makes making further fermentation nearly impossible. It probably also causes cancer, but who knows....