Currently making a sort of unique recipe. A wonderful park nearby has a public orchard, and whenever I go I take some apples home with me, and I've been putting them in the freezer not knowing what to do with them. With around 10 pounds of apples (and an apricot somehow) I decided that enough was enough and I'm gonna free up the space. I also live nearby an apple tree, and yesterday I picked a bunch of apples, also 10 pounds, and decided to try to make cider with what I have.
For general guidance I'm loosely following this apple wine recipe.
I don't have a juicer so I put the fresh, not frozen apples in a food processor and ground them to pulp 4 cups at a time and then pressed them the old fashioned way. This sucks. Took hours and got lots of pulp anyway. Not doing this without a juicer next time.
Then I took the frozen apples, which had already broken the pectin in them, making them squishy, chopped them up, and threw 'em in the bucket with the freshly pressed and pasteurized cider, and added campden + pectic enzyme. Today I took the frozen apple chunks and hand-crushed them to get the juices—couldn't find a better way since they're so slippery, also felt novel and cool to crush apples with my bare hands. The freezing + enzyme made it super easy, I bet I could just make pure apple juice like this too. The must of cider and apple mash is about 1.5 gallons. Also added some cloves and cinnamon for spice.
I then dissolved some 1 pound of honey and around half a pound of turbinado sugar in half a gallon of hot water and I'm about to add that right now after it cools, and then I'm going to add Côte des Blanc yeast, which is foaming in a bowl right now.
I'm aiming to make something more like cider but if it ends up being just wine I'm fine with that too. I guess this could also be called cyser because I'm using honey?
I'll update on how it goes, and update with an initial gravity soon.
For general guidance I'm loosely following this apple wine recipe.
I don't have a juicer so I put the fresh, not frozen apples in a food processor and ground them to pulp 4 cups at a time and then pressed them the old fashioned way. This sucks. Took hours and got lots of pulp anyway. Not doing this without a juicer next time.
Then I took the frozen apples, which had already broken the pectin in them, making them squishy, chopped them up, and threw 'em in the bucket with the freshly pressed and pasteurized cider, and added campden + pectic enzyme. Today I took the frozen apple chunks and hand-crushed them to get the juices—couldn't find a better way since they're so slippery, also felt novel and cool to crush apples with my bare hands. The freezing + enzyme made it super easy, I bet I could just make pure apple juice like this too. The must of cider and apple mash is about 1.5 gallons. Also added some cloves and cinnamon for spice.
I then dissolved some 1 pound of honey and around half a pound of turbinado sugar in half a gallon of hot water and I'm about to add that right now after it cools, and then I'm going to add Côte des Blanc yeast, which is foaming in a bowl right now.
I'm aiming to make something more like cider but if it ends up being just wine I'm fine with that too. I guess this could also be called cyser because I'm using honey?
I'll update on how it goes, and update with an initial gravity soon.
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