Preservative Free Apple Juice

[Dene McDonald]

Now that I'm taking over the kitchen on a regular basis for my brews I thought I should make something the wife would enjoy.

So I was wondering if anyone can recommend easily available preservative free apple juice that's good for making cider.

Has anyone got any experience ciders - I've heard  it's better to use juice than the kits. Any recomended recipes would be good too!

Thanks,

Dene

[Sam]

I've made 'cheats cider' from the 3 litre bottles of apple juice you can buy from the super market, I make it in 5 litre demijohns or smaller (1.5 litre grolsch bottles) for experiments. Instead of using a hydrometer to see when fermentation has finished and then bottling I normally leave it for probably at least two weeks after fermentation has appeared to stop and its cleared up. Makes a very dry cider, if you leave it for long enough it can also be clear (only tried it a few times but in my experience non clear apple juice can make clear cider to), I don't like commercial cider because its to sweet but find this cider quite nice. I can't remember if it contained preservatives though

[mattd2]

Yep done the same, used SR apple juice from Countdown. Also added a bit of sugar to up the ABV to around 10%ish. I think with just stright apple juice you would be looking at about 6% I think.

I've given it to a few people who like dry cider and they enjoyed it, and were amazed when I told them how much (or little) effort went into it!

[Des Ross]

I have done a couple of brews with packaged juice, preservative free. One used some honey to increase SG and flavour, the other Just Juice 'Crispy Apple'. I added half tea spoon of malic acid to each brew to provide some balance ( 10% crab apple juice would do the same). I used 15L of Keri and Just Juice, then added 1Kg of coopers brewing sugar that was lying around.  I diluted to 23L and SG 1.045 and fermented with some saved 05 beer yeast. Cider can ferment to 1.000 so ABV on this was 5.7%. I added 3/4 cup of dextrose to prime. This is really lovely to drink after 2 months, very refreshing, dry and crisp. My advice is to go for a 5 to 5.8% cider. Much more pleasant to drink. The 2nd brew is much more complex, 7.8% and though nice, too much alcohol to enjoy as much as the other.

[denimglen]

Most apple juices with 'preservatives' in them are OK to use.  Usually it's E300 aka Ascorbic Acid aka Vitamin C and isn't harmful to yeast.  There's another one they use sometimes also which doesn't inhibit yeast but I can't remember it of the top of my head.

As mentioned above Just Juice Crisp Apple works well.  The little concentrate cartons are good for boosting the flavour and/or back-sweetening post-fermentation.

[Tilt]

A quick query on backsweetening without using lactose.  Whats the best way to stop yeast activity?  I'd imagine fining and keeping chilled is OK to limit secondary fermentation but is there a better way?

[Richard Jack]

potassium sorbate and metabisulphate.

[Dene McDonald]

Thanks for the help everyone - great to hear what everyone else has done. I see that countdown have Keri on special so this might be a good option.

Can anyone comment on the difference between a Granny Smith juice and an old fashioned style. I guess it's clarity and a bit more bite for the granny smith variety?

Shame I didn't think of this a month or two ago - Imagine presenting a keg of cider as an Xmas pressy!

[mattd2]

I got a 1.5 ltr grolsh bottle of the high abv dry sparkling cider I made to crack open at a family Xmas do this weekend. Been conditioning for about 5 months now so hopefully some of the alcohol harshness has faded (not that it was all that harsh to begin with). But the higher abv stuff is definately more of a wine type drink than normal cider.

[Fairlane]

I put approx 30kg of royal gala through a juicer, chilled the juice overnight, racked off the solids and fermented with some lager yeast at about 12 deg C.   Refermented in the bottle with some reserved juice.  It was about 5-6% and pretty tasty

One thing I noticed was that even though I added some yeast nutrient at the start of ferment, I had to add more after about 2-3 days as the juice obviously didn't have the nutrients that wort does for making a happy yeast.

[Richard Jack]

I've been doing small batches of cider from bottled juice, no added sugar just add yeast. For my money the nicest one is the freshup "crisp apple" - it's the filtered one, the cloudy "old fashioned apple" is not as good, even after dosing it with pectinase, and definitely not as good without pectinase. The Keri one was a close second behind fresh up. Haven't done the signature range stuff yet though.

As an aside, if anyone in Aucks wants any free whole apples, flip me a message this arvo - tonight I'm going to go and pick up some Pink Lady Apples and Granny Smith's that fell off the back of a truck, or a sorting machine, or something. Granny smiths are spoken for though. would need you to pick them up from Remuera in the next two nights, and need to know today how much I should grab.

[Dene McDonald]

Do you have anyproblems with beers tainting the the cider from either your fermentor or beer lines?

[Richard Jack]

I haven't personally. But I'm not cider fanatic, so maybe someone with a better palate for cider might?

Does anyone have ideas about a good warm weather fermenter (yeast) for cider?