28.5 gallons + pectic enzyme. New personal best

Brewing my first ever batch (started 11/28/24) and it looks pretty clear. No bubbling in the airlock or the brew itself. Krausen disappeared over a week ago. Essentially no visible activity whatsoever for about a week. Hesitant to stir it.

I know i’m supposed to trust the process but how much longer should I plan to wait for before bottling? I’ve decided to not do a secondary fermentation for my first time and maybe carbonate/back-sweeten.

Side question: How long do you age your ciders for after bottling?

Not completely sure what apples I used, since I got them from a random guy's garden. (With consent of course 😅) I do believe it's Filippa apples. Anyways, turned out great. A little acidic but not to much. EC-1118 yeast. ABV 6.5% ish. Mild backsweetened with sugar, carbonated and pasturised. After a month of maturing, it did taste a little more apple and fruityness than when I bottled it. Will it be even better after 4-5 months more? How should I store them for best taste development?

First time cider maker here.

Have 5 gallons in secondary that I'd like to move to 1L flip top bottles with various fruit flavorings and different levels of backweetening + priming for carbonation.

Where would you suggest sourcing the fruit flavorings? Should I just add a little store juice? Are concentrates better? Should I then with pectic enzyme for a few days to keep the cider clear?

Don't have any bottling equipment so plan is to just siphon into the flip top bottles with the flavorings/sweeteners and then pasteurize and stack them in a mini fridge.

Any input or advice?

Took 2 gallons pasteurized apple cider boiled with 6 pounds cranberry’s ,1/2 pound of honey, 1/2 pound of sugar, and couple Packets of bakers yeast.

Boiled and strained pitched some lavlin ICV - D47

This is the most active batch I’ve made.

We own a multi-fruit first gen farm and have recently stepped into the commercial cider making realm. So far our base ciders are coming out great and are getting rave reviews. We'd like to diversify our base a bit with some of the other fruits/berries from our farm. We have a couple hundred pounds of blueberries, cherries and honeyberries frozen from this years harvest. With the honeyberries and cherries the logic to us is to just press/juice them and add that juice sterilized/pasteurized at the end of secondary ferment or to back sweeten with. We have a bin pasteurizer that we can pasteurize with to avoid bottle bombs. We could also possibly use whole fruit/puree. My question therein lies with the whole fruit/puree especially with blueberries, as they do not juice/press well. Any suggestions on how this is accomplished on the commercial scale? Adding a puree would certainly cause a haze, which in some cases would be great, but others not so much. But the challenge with whole fruit becomes how do we get the fruit out our two bbl fermenters after a few days of the cider being racked on top of it without causing massive delays in our production time? Are we overthinking it and the fruit will float so we can just rack out of the bottom of our conical? Any commercial cider maker input would be amazing as I've scoured the internet to no avail and don't want to waste this years harvest with messy experimentation. Thanks in advance!

Newb here. I have a demijohn that has been fermenting for nearly 6 weeks now and is still going, albeit slowly. Should I wait til it stops giving off gas before racking?

I've done a hard cider with a berry addition before but the berry addition was usually done 2 weeks into fermentation. I pitched my yeast on Oct 23rd and I typically let me ciders go 2 - 3 months in primary before packaging (don't do secondary). Has anyone added berries to a cider at a point similar to this?

Humbly submitted to the brain trust. TIA.

First glass of a cider I fermented around two months ago from juice from a local orchard plus some crab apples.

15L Coxes Orange, 6L Pacific Rose 1.75L crabapple juice + 1tsp yeast nutrient.

OG of 1.053 down to 1.001 FG (6.8% abv) fermented with M02 yeast. Fermented at 14C then raised to 18C as fermentation was subsiding. Pressure transfered to a keg and carbed to 2.8 vol.

Refreshing dry and clean, acidity and apple flavour not as strong as I'd like but not surprised given it was primarily from eating apples juice. The orchard has a limited supply of Strumer so will make sure I get some of that next year

Thanks for the tips and suggestions!

Does anybody know where I can find the 1911 jam on it flavor? I live about an hour north og albany and nobody has it. I've been out to thr cidery in September but they didn't have any cans available. Any help will be appreciated.

I work at a cidery and we just finished packing up our latest release. This allocation we have a Porter’s perfection single variety, a Kingston Black single varietal and a local blend from Weber Canyon that is made from roadside and wild crab apple trees. It’s a pretty good lineup so I thought I would share it here in case anyone is interested. It’s delicious and a great way to support small farms/regenerative agriculture. Must be in the US and 21 to purchase:) https://www.fenceline.co/club

As a first season noob, I am experimenting with 6 gallons in separate 1 gallon carboys pressed from my own apple trees. 4 gallons from one pressing, and 2 from a week later. I did not add yeast as I'm trying for as natural as possible, and it's working so far.

One gallon of the first 4 stopped bubbling last week, so I siphoned it off and put in 3 swing top liter bottles with 6g sugar in each (Sugar in the Raw turbinado, because I had it already.) We had about 8 oz. that didn't fit and it was good, like a beer/apple juice hybrid.

The remaining 5 gallons are still slowly bubbling but there's a layer of lees on the bottom of every jug. I need to move the bottles off my corner fireplace mantle for Christmas decorations, so it's a good time to siphon them off.

I was a little disappointed in the ABV of that first jug I emptied 2.6% (1.042 down to 1.022). Not sure why that one gallon stopped before the other 3 from the same press, but moving on.

When I siphon these into clean carboys, they obviously won't be full. Time for more experimentation.
I have some apple juice in mason jars pressed from cooked apples I pressed this season. It's actually what I strained off, from making applesauce. Is is thick, I usually mix with water to drink. Can I top off the carboys with this juice and let it ferment some more? Will this increase the ABV? I see a lot of people adding store bought juice concentrate, but I want bragging rights about everything coming from my trees as much as possible, plus it's cheaper, LOL.

Or should I just combine what I have into about 4 gallons and drink the rest? Would I add some sugar to keep it going?

Also, I thought about throwing a cinnamon stick in one of the jugs, because experimentation. Is there any prep I need to do to keep it from making it funky somehow?

I still have 9 more 1 liter bottles and plan to fill a few more for bottle carbonation, and heat and process in mason jars for still cider for drinking hot.

Got all 3 of my fermenters hammering away. Starting to get a lot more experimental with it, the days of just white sugar and Champaign yeast are long gone.

So I made multipe batches of Cider this year. Apple, Apple Clove Cinimon, and Apple Valilla (pure extract because I could not get vanilla beans). All pitched with EC-1118 (I accidently bought a bulk pack so I need to use it up). One lonley Gallon of Apple Clove Cinimon sat until the air lock slowed to a stop. i kept the airlock hydrated though. It continued to sit until the bubbles cleared from the liquid. It sat for 4 weeks and every spec of sedament had fallen to the bottom. The Cider had sat on the dead yeast with no activity. I thought ohh boy this is going to pick up a lot of astringency. Bottled it any way in 8 oz and 16 oz bottles. 1/2 teaspoon of Turbinado (my secret weapon) Sugar per 8 oz. Let them sit for 3 more weeks. I messed up and lost the SG reading, so taking a FG reading didn't make much sense. Tasting at bottling, all the flavors sucker punched me in the mouth, and it was dry as the mojave desert. As I said I let them sit in bottles for 3 more weeks. These things are super clear without any geletin, pectin, campden, or insert other clarity/finin product. Very thin layer of sediment in the bottom. And a thin layer of syrup where the Turbinado sugar took up residence. They taste amazing and remind me of some desert my Great Aunt and Gandmother would make. They are strong with the Alcohol as Yoda would say. But no carbination at all and the Turbinado Sugar keeps settling out to the bottom as syrup no matter how you shake it. Did I by chance max out the ABV in this batch and kill all the EC-1118 yeast? 🤔 I know, I know, take gravity, it's important... etc... But the notebook landed in the trash when some dinner spilled on the counter one night. Can't really help it now.

I followed a bunch of my uncles old recipes, the strawberry and cinnamon are fine, but this blueberry one has a huge white film across the top that the others don’t have. I can’t tell if it’s mold, pectin (since it’s blueberries) or what, but all 3 recipes are the same except the fruit and cinnamon sticks

My cider is coming along nicely. Still will be a month or so before it clears, but I fermented it bone dry.

When I have made wine kits before they usually add some sulfites prior to bottling to help with preservation. Is this necessary with cider or can I just bottle it from the carboy after it clears with no additives?

It will probably all be drank within a year. I store it at a little below room temperature, I don't have the fridge space for all of it.

Just bottled some cider. I didn’t pasteurise as I racked them twice already. I have them in the garden covered by some pots in case they explode. How long should I wait before they’re safe?

Hey guys, I’m new to the hobby of home brewing and my first cider made from apple juice just finished fermenting. It’s pretty dry, so I’m thinking about adding a little bit sugar. I was wondering if I should back sweeten now or could i just bottle and add some sugar right before drinking? Would there be the difference?

First batch of applejack bottled. Used a 14% abv cider made from store bought juice and brown sugar. Went through 4 or 5 freezes until it wouldn't freeze anymore. Pretty smooth now, can't to see how it taste after mellowing a few weeks

Hey Everyone.

I was having great success with my apple cider so I decided to try making a batch with another type of juice. I tried this sunrype Pear/Peach (PEACH PEAR | Sunrype) since i know your can use pear juice for ciders.

I used my usual lavalin yeast and Tried adding a teaspoon of YEast nutrient in my 1 gallon carbuy. got a reading of 1.010 grav which is fine .

Day 1-> no reaction, gross chunks on top

Day 2-> no reaction, gross chunks on top

Day 3 -> Lots of bubbling, Good sign!

Day-4 -> no reaction, gross chunks on top

Day 5 and onwards-> no reaction, gross chunks on top

its been about 10 days now and there's no progress an a slightly weird smell (slightly sulfur so could be yeast stress). Any thoughts what could of gone wrong and if theres anything i can do to save it?

https://preview.redd.it/lematrdx1h5e1.jpg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=074e64f2d466fece9ef6efdd0c0d900cac2466a2

https://preview.redd.it/mmwbnt3y1h5e1.jpg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7773e6ada7f44b9eebd35f017938b411d5733d86

I love my cider, I love my ginger. Has anyone here put the two flavors together? How and when did you add the ginger to the cider?

I flipped my bottle to extract the sediment. They have been sitting upside down for about 2 weeks now, but a tiny amount of the sediment is clinging the wall and doesn't want to fall down. It is not glued to the wall, because when I spin the bottle, it spins with the cider inside and not with the bottle.

Any ideas how to "dislodge" it? I have tried spinning the bottle along vertical axis to agitate the sediment a couple times, but it does almost nothing. Should I tilt the bottles and turn them every few days?

I've been experimenting the last few seasons with various versions of natural carbonation, but I'm not sure I'm satisfied with any of my results. We like the cider but it's always completely dry and often overcarbonated. The one time I got a little more sweetness out of it *and* carbonation was when I used the little carbonation drops, which left some extra sweetness. I assume that it contained an undigestible (by yeast) sugar type.

How difficult is forced carb? I'd like to try to stop fermentation when I'm happy with the taste and then force carb.

Saw this post in Beer, and curious what the thoughts are for cider? Obviously two very different markets, US and abroad.

Another year almost down, and I've still been out of the loop with what's going on in the beer cider world. What's been popular trend and style wise, and what do you see coming in 2025?