Making Cider from Apple Mush

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Making Cider from Apple Mush

Postby RuddyCrazy » Friday Jun 24, 2011 6:36 pm

G'day Guy's,
Well after reading something like 100 or more of Geoff's and Olivers homebrew recipes I reckon after a 12 year drought on homebrew it is time to start again. Anyway where I work we process apples, pears plums etc and last week I got a 22kg wino pack ( sealed bag) which is good for 12 months before opening. The process this apple went thru was basically primary crusher, coarse finisher, fine finisher the thru a pasteurizer and basically is apple sauce.

First Q would this be suitable for making some cider or should I just feed to to my lowline Angus cow for a treat. As we have close to 100 ton of apple at work if this isn't the easiest way to make cider I could just go grab a few sacks of apples and make my own crusher and juicer. Although I do like cider, beer is my favorite drop but the missus loves cider and by making a few brews should keep her off my beer for good.

A good friend did suggest using champagne yeast so we're on the hunt for that but the Q really is as this stuff so so mushy I'm thinking of just putting the lot into my soon to be cider fermenter, topping it up with hot water so the yeast has some some temp to kick in. As the stuff has been pasteurized I don't need to worry about wild yeast.

As it does get down to below zero here I'm going to convert my old gas fridge into a fermenting fridge. I'll put a heater element out of photocopier which runs on 24 volts DC and run it straight off my shed batterybank. For keeping the temp right I'll program a pic micro controller to switch the heater on at a certain temp and use a bit of fuzzy logic to keep the right temp range.

A bit much on a simple cider topic but eh Guy's reading the website for months I'm finally hooked.

Cheers Bryan
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Re: Making Cider from Apple Mush

Postby rotten » Friday Jun 24, 2011 11:57 pm

G'day and welcome.
I think it's worth trying at least, if it didn't cost you anything what have you got to lose?
Maybe you should get it to a thinner consistency first though. You may want to also consider adding some lactose or dex to thin it out a bit, add some sweetness, and stop it finishing like champagne, because I don't think that's what you want.
I made my cider with bottled apple juice and 2 packs of the coopers yeast, it finished very dry and tart, like champagne.
Give crushing your own a go too.
I always wondered what a peach or necatarine cider would be like? Perhaps I could do it next season.
Cheers
Beer numbs all zombies !!!
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Re: Making Cider from Apple Mush

Postby Oliver » Saturday Jun 25, 2011 2:36 pm

Hello and welcome Bryan. And welcome back to the wonderful world of homebrewing.

Further to Rotten's suggestion, some people also report success using Safale US-05 yeast in ciders.

Food for thought.

Cheers,

Oliver
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Re: Making Cider from Apple Mush

Postby RuddyCrazy » Sunday Aug 07, 2011 3:06 pm

G'day Guy's,
Well finally got around to doing a cider brew, :twisted: I used some SN9 champagne yeast and the 10kg bag of mush. I boiled up 2 large tubs of water and let them cool. The fermenter is a 20 litre sealed top drum I got from Barnacle Bills for $4. When the temp was 28 degrees I threw the yeast in and in less than 3 hours it was bubbling away nicely. I put a beach towel around to try and keep the temp up but over night it dropped to 15 degrees and the brew nearly stopped. So I took it up to my shed and put it in my old gas fridge along with a 75 watt light bulb. Within about an hour it was bubbling away nicely again and this morning the temp was on 20C. So hopefully next weekend I'll be bottling the first brew.

Cheers Bryan
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Re: Making Cider from Apple Mush

Postby RuddyCrazy » Sunday Sep 11, 2011 11:23 am

G'day Guy's,
Well lit has been a month since I bottled the cider and last night just had to have a taste, :twisted: . The first bottle popped with a nice fizz and after a mouthfull for a bit of fun I blew into my alchy tester.... 1.7 :mrgreen: Some of the other bottles didn't really fiz yet others spewed over the top once opened. Well so much for using a tea spoon for the priming measure :lol:

This week at work we are doing some single strength apple mush using the cold method so the guys are going to bag up a couple of 5kg bags and I'll have a go at using 1/2 the amount of this first brew. Some do say one needs pure apple juice to make cider but using this mush did prove on my first attempt the finished product does taste better than Strongbow so I reckon I'm onto it big time. With the next brew I might chuck in some extra sugar to raise the alchy content as dwinking 5 longnecks only got me 1/2 way there......

Cheers Bryan

P.S. if I can find a 200 litre drum and get hold of a keg or 5 I might have to have a go using that 22 kg bag then take the kegs into work to carbonate them. All the guys at work are keen to taste it and I did say well if I endup doing a few kegs then I can throw a couple on for the xmas party.....
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Re: Making Cider from Apple Mush

Postby RuddyCrazy » Saturday Mar 03, 2012 2:38 pm

G'day Guy's,
Well got a 200 litre drum and that 22kg bag of apple mush so would one satchel of SN9 be enough or would I need a couple or more. I am planning on doing one batch of 150 litres so some advice would be aprreciated before I go head long into it.

Regards Bryan
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