Hello everyone,

Has anyone tried to make a yerba mate cider? The green tea leaf which is very popular in South America.

It also appears to have quite some tannin, which I am looking for as I mostly use juice from eating apples.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8984970/

I have the luxury of living in Upstate New York which is apple country. Picking season is over so what’s left gets juiced or composted. Farmer said help myself to as many as I wanted! Now I have acres of trees to pick from but only two carboys. Questions:

1. Can I freeze them (I have a chest freezer)?
2. What effect will freezing have?

Thanks for advice!

P.S. it amazes me what won’t sell in a grocery store. These are considered “seconds,” absolutely ridiculous.

I'm getting ready to start a 3 gallon batch and I want to try brewing store bought juice on a bunch of apple peels I've been saving. Are the peels going to provide enough tannins or should I still add some strong brewed tea?

I'm pretty new to brewing and never have made cider, admittedly. We just moved and have a huge crabapple tree in our front yard so I was like....why not?!?! Well, here's where I went wrong - I juiced, not pressed the crabapples which made for a thicker juice. I added pectic acid before fermenting but the bottom of my gallon jug is just full of thick sediment. Like, maybe 1/4....so, a lot. I'm wondering....could i siphon the liquid out of the top, add in just fresh apple juice from the store and then run through a second fermentation? What would it hurt? I'm planning on back-sweetening and pasteurizing after fermentation just to be on the safe side until I get this dialed in. Don't know if that's needed info....

this is just for the benefit of me & u/QuentinMagician/ - and anyone else who googles this in the future. Plus I know people in this sub like experimenting with flavours etc. so perhaps the rest of you might find it interesting

earlier this year, a storm knocked over a plum tree. We're only here a few years so not entirely sure what variety, but I think it was a Mirabelle - small yellow fruit, not much flavour, but still. It was a beautiful tree, great white blossoms in the early spring, I'll miss it. I managed to make a small amount of jam from it, but that's all

My dad chainsawed it up, and I split it with the ax, and the aroma from the split wet wood was incredible. It makes terrible firewood, too damp and stringy, but occasionally I still get a brief blast of that aroma - really fruity.

anyway, after a few batches of cider this year, I got to thinking about how to improve the flavour. I've done hops and that seems to work well. But something is missing. I have an oak tree, but not going to chop it down just yet. but then I got thinking - how about the plum wood? I won't miss it from the firewood anyway!

I've scoured this sub and beyond but there isn't a whole lot of research available on this topic. Most people seem to be using commercially produced oak spirals or cubes, as far as I can tell which isn't much help here with plum wood seasoned for no more than six months

so here's what I did - firstly, I just chopped up some plum wood into small pieces. now plum is pretty fibrous, so it ends up splintering into stringy bits which didn't seem ideal. getting uniform chips was tricky - I felt these splinters would end up producing too much sediment

first test - tea made from raw chips. so a cup full boiling water poured onto a small handful of chips and left to steep for a hour. look at the colour! incredible colour but unfortunately not much flavour. it just tastes like water (which made me burp a little too much)

first test

a bit more research led me to the second test - this time I stuck the chips in the oven before making the tea. Aga oven doesn't let me control the temp so it's about 200deg C. I checked them every 15 mins for aroma and not much happened until about 40 mins. then I got a nice biscuit scent so I took them out and made a tea. again steeped for an hour in freshly boiled water. unfortunately this time the colour declined in vibrancy, and the flavour did not really improve a whole lot

second test

so for the third test, I went back to the drawing board. this time I dropped the oven toasting, second-guessed myself and went for stringy shavings rather than chips. But crucially, I went for a boil, rather than a tea - at least 20 mins roilling boil, then cooled in a tea and strained after an hour.
the result? a much deeper colour and finally a little bit of tannins in the mouthfeel! I've added a few mls to a glass I've just poured from a recent bottle and it really blushes the colour up nicely and adds a new dimension to the taste so we might actually be getting somewhere. I have another batch about to pitch so fingers crossed by the time I get to secondary, I will have this plum tea ready to go - maybe a longer boil but I think that this might actually work in the end!

third test

anyone with any suggestions, I'm all ears - thanks folks!

Just started batch #8. I make this each year for the following year's thanksgiving holiday.

Starting gravity was 1.046 gravity now is 0.990. what should I do rack? Add sugar? There is a slight unpleasant smell but the taste is dry as you would expect but with some good flavor

Decided to splash out on a mixed case. Have only had the black dragon before so interested in hearing what people think/know about the others.

I am a beginner to advanced. I normally make Cider from fresh apple juice. But I tried for the first time a pasteurized 100% juice without additives, a little better.

I normally use wine yeast, but this time I used better quality dried baker's yeast and experimented a bit with a smaller amount of fresh yeast.

There were 40g of white sugar per 1l. Fermentation ends in two days, 10g of sugar is added, end again on day 3. I found it strange. I tasted one bottle and drank it all.

8-10% alcohol according to taste. Cloudy. Dry. A bit of a stale apple taste.

I just went 2000 years back in time. It worked 🤣🤣

Picked up a new carboy from the local homebrew store. Star San & PBW is expensive. Should I still use some ?

Hi and thanks for your help! I put some juice into primary fermentation in 1gal glass carboys and had to leave town for a bit (not ideal). When I got back I noticed some of the 3 piece airlocks had some juice and sediment in them. I did a good job cleaning/sanitizing everything and used vodka in the airlocks. Has anyone had this happen before and if so, what were the results? They are still ticking along and the only visual difference between the 2 that bubbled over from the 4 that didn't are the airlocks. Thanks again for your time and help!

Good morning all. I apologize if this has been asked in some other form before but I'm new and not even sure what questions I'm supposed to ask.

Long story short I am making my first batch of hard cider. The juice is unfiltered and organic, but it was pasteurized. The end goal is to have it carbonated, utilizing carb drops, if that matters. My question is, does the cider need to be pasteurized again once it's done fermenting, and if so, how do I go about doing that? It's a 3 gallon batch and it'll just be me and one of my friends drinking it, so it'll need to last at least a few months.

Thank you in advance for your help.

It’s been fermenting for about a week and a half. Not really sure if this is bad or if anything should be done?

Hello everybody,

I’m new to cider crafting and I’d like to know if it is usual to add water to decrease the OG of fresh pressed apple juice. I’m getting OGs between 1.050 and 1.060, which lead to ciders with +7% ABV. I like my ciders dry, so stop the fermentation prematurely is not an option.

Thank you for your time.

On my final cider of the year I think. I've never tried oaking before, but given that I have some plum logs here, from a tree felled by a storm earlier in the year, I thought I'd give it a try.

I believe it should be close to a cherry flavour - anyone tried anything like this before?

Hey y'all, I'm a fairly new brewer (June this year) and I've become obsessed with cider. I want to compare several popular yeasts in making a basic/plain cider, but I need your help in figuring out the ideal process for each yeast so that I can get a fair comparison of their best foot forward.

Currently, I use Kveik yeasts (recently a slight preference for Lutra over Voss) because they are fast (4 weeks is more than enough pitch to glass) and because they consistently leave in a noticable amount of sugar and apple flavor, making them very drinkable as-is when primed with sugar (1.002-3 and no need to add apple flavor back in with concentrate). They work just chucking yeast into juice at room temperature, but:

• massively benefit from nutrient; I've settled at 2.5g/gal fermaid-O (minimum, and I've been adding it all up front)
• moderately benefit from heating the juice to 90 or so at pitch and wrapping to maintain warmth during fermentation (still experimenting with whether heat during fermentation is good/bad/neutral)
• somewhat benefit from staggering the nutrient instead of adding it all up front (still experimenting with this)

I bottle at two weeks (could go sooner but rarely bother) and start drinking 2 weeks after that. I know this process is VERY different than what most cider yeasts will want. What yeast do you prefer, and what is your preferred process for brewing with it? Of the names I've seen, mangrove jack m02 and Nottingham seem to be the most popular overall, so advice for those in particular would be appreciated. Runner ups seen to be imperial bubbles, belle Saison, and k-97, but if anyone has a different yeast they like I'd love to hear about it! I'm hoping to run a bunch of simultaneous 1.5 gallon batches in 2 gallon buckets, but if I have to use carboys and stagger the batches I can do that.

Edit: because it's what I can consistently get affordably in quantity, I use commercial juice. Specifically Kirkland apple juice, not from concentrate, with no additions.

An unfortunate newbie question for the group.

My first batch (15 gal or so) of wild cider was forgotten about over a cold snap in my garage. It got down to 20 degrees.

My question is, is it dead? Is it ruined? I was about to rack it off the lees and age it over the winter. What's the best course of action now?

Thanks!

Hi folks! I pressed my first set of apples this year and kept 4 gallons to try and make hard cider with. I’ve read several books on the matter and decided to make 4 gallons each in their own bucket to start with so I could experiment with different yeasts and back sweetening. On the 21st I added campden tablets (1 tablet per gallon) let it sit for 24 hours and then I added the yeast. I read that folks typically add about a gram of yeast per gallon but that it didnt hurt to add more. So I added 2.5 grams to each bucket as I had 2 packets and wanted to use it up. I also added yeast nutrient following the directions on the bag (I think it was 1 tablespoon per gallon). I mixed it all together, capped each bucket, and added the air locks. I didnt see any activity in the air locks until about 36 hours later. One of the yeast seemed more active and started before the other. The books talk about a stream of bubbles in the air locks but I never got that. Sort of just like large bubbles pushing their way out now and again. Now - about 5-6 days later I have no bubbles going on at all. I guess I assumed that I might see bubbles for a longer period of time.

I had planned on transferring the gallons to clear glass carboys after primary fermentation but I had also planned that to take 2 weeks.

I guess my question is - is it common for primary fermentation to go this quick? One book suggested to leave it even after the bubbling stops so that things can settle in the bucket before transferring. Some googling led me to a page where they suggested leaving it for a month! So Im a little confused about the timing and my guess is that there’s no right answer here. Just looking for a little guidance as this is my first time. If the bubbling stops I assume that means primary fermentation is done? Can I now transfer to the glass jugs for secondary?

Another note here - I had refrigerated the fresh juice because I had pressed it the day before and didnt want to worry about spoiling. So I had add the yeast to cold juice which Im now wondering was a mistake. That said - I know that some fermentation kicked off as I did see big bubbles going through the airlock.

Thanks!

We have a few trees of different varieties in our home orchard, to include some crab apples, which contributed to the pressing we did yesterday. Since it was a small press, we decided to freeze the washed apples (a couple hours after picking), then thaw and press them. We wanted to see if we could bypass the mess of the grinding process, and it worked wonderfully! We got about 5-1/2 gallons of some very tasty cider!

It tastes great, it has a decent mouthfeel, but it just looks syrupy in the glass. It's just a bit thicker and... syrupy? I don't know how else to describe it.

Does anyone know what may be different this time? Usually, we have the normal consistency, but we changed the process. I also really put the beans to it when I was pressing this time (the mash was dry and fibrous when we opened the press). I'm happy with what I got, but I'm really curious why I got it, ya know?

Thanks, all!

I didn't have a hydrometer when I started this and I'm hoping someone can help me estimate what my OG probably was so I can estimate the abv. I used 2.5 gallons of martinelli's apple cider and 4 lbs of brown sugar. Current gravity reading is 1.000. If I remember I think I roughly estimated it would be around 14% but I don't remember how I did that so I'm sure I was way off lol

Doing a little 1 gallon experiments with Trader Joe’s juice