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OfflineNizzyJones
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Beginners' Guide To Homebrewing Meads and Ciders
    #17114237 - 10/27/12 09:22 PM (11 years, 3 months ago)

Sparked partly by the great discussion Wiccan Seeker started awhile back I've recently got into home brewing meads and ciders and wanted to collect info from various web sources and the CAGB forum here and put together a step-by-step beginner's guide to brewing small batches. I'll be taking a minimalist approach to procedure, equipment and investment, with a few comments on optional steps or equipment {enclosed in braces}. With apologies to our British English speaking friends I'll be using the American definition of cider (a cloudy juice made by pressing or crushing apples) and using 'hard cider' (or 'apple wine') to describe the finished alcoholic product.

Supplies

First of all try to find a local brewing supply store, or store which sells brewing supplies, I got out of my local health food store with an airlock, a bung (or rubber stopper), and packet of yeast for $3.85 when ordering them online would have cost at least $10.

For the first stage you will need:
  • Yeast - really almost any strain meant for brewing will do but it's common to use dried wine or champagne yeasts (partially due to them being inexpensive). You can find a chart comparing the attributes of commercially availible yeast at the website of Wine-Maker Magazine. The alcohol tolerance of your yeast and the total amount of fermentable sugar in your brew are the main factors which determine its alcohol content.
  • Carboy - the fermentation container. You can get away with fermenting directly in the plastic cider jugs but you must fill your airlock with vodka and you may still end up sucking in air (which is bad, mmkay?); I'm reusing an empty 4 liter wine jug. I'm told Whole Foods also sell gallons of cider in glass jugs that are ready to go carboys.
  • Airlock - a device which allows CO2 produced by fermentation to escape without letting nasties into your brew. You can also run a line of (sterile) tubing from the hole in the bung to a cup of water but the airlock is cheap (~$1) and more convenient. The 'three piece' style should be preferred to the S-bend as they're usually about the same price & the latter are more likely to let air in.
  • Bung or rubber stopper - plugs the mouth of your carboy and is drilled out to hold the airlock, for one gallon jugs you want a #6 stopper, preferably pre-drilled.
  • Sanitizer - bleach is what you're most likely to have but you can also buy iodine based sanitizers at brew supply stores which won't require rinsing (if you're using bleach, and hence rinsing, remember to rinse with distilled or sanitized water to avoid reintroducing contaminants).
  • Cider - obviously the best quality juice or cider (henceforth just 'cider') you're willing to buy/make is preferred. As they say: garbage in, garbage out. Ciders with Potassium Sorbate reportedly may still ferment adequately if you make a starter culture of yeast in sugar water but other preservatives are not acceptable for brewing. Ascorbic acid, Vitamin C, is not a preservative for our purposes. In moments of need frozen juice concentrates are less likely to contain preservatives {some people also use them undiluted to add some viscosity to the mouthfeel and depth to packaged juice; you can also experiment with adding some other flavors with them}.
  • Fermentable sugar - Brown, white, honey or a combination - I've read about ratios from 2 oz. to 1 lb. per gallon for ciders ranging from about 6% at the low end to apple wine territory at the high end. If you're making mead the rough rule of thumb is 1 lb. honey / Gal. = 5% ABV fermented dry. 2 to 2.5 lb. honey per gallon is a good range for dry meads - 2.5 lb (~12.5% ABV) being standard in most commercial dry meads.
  • {Non-fermentable sugar} - natural ones like sorbitol, xylitol, or lactose, or artificial like 'splenda', etc. can be used to add sweetness. If you have a yeast with a high enough alcohol tolerance it will eat up all the available fermentable sugars leaving a dry or tart (with enough acid) end product. Be careful not to add too much: start with 2-3 Tb. xylitol per gallon and work up slowly. Remember alcohol can be perceived as slightly sweet so stronger brews may need less.
  • {Yeast nutrient} - ciders aren't quite as nutritious as beer worts so a little yeast nutrient at about a 1/4 tea. per gallon can help things along, but isn't necessary (esp. with heartier strains of yeast) in meads some form of extra yeast food is probably wise. Some brewers supplement their meads'/ciders' worts with raisins, oranges or grapes.
  • A bucket or large stock pot for sanitizing your equipment in. If your carboy/fermenter is too large to fit inside, just mix up some sanitizer inside it.


Supplies for racking (more on this later):
  • Food safe rubber tubing
  • {Racking cane or Auto Siphon}
  • Second carboy or fermenter
  • {Bottling wand or tube clamp}


Alright, got all that assembled? Good, let's begin.


Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Brews!

Step One: Clean and Sanitize All The Things!

And I mean all the things that will come in contact with your brew. Clean with hot soapy water, wash and rinse, you know the drill. Also make sure your cider is pasteurized before sterilizing your equipment. If it is not you'll need to pasteurize it either with Campden Tablets (heat free chemical "pasteurizer" available at brewing supply stores which take 24 to 48 hrs) or vat pasteurize by bringing the cider to 145ºF for at least half an hour (time and temp. for faster methods can be found at the USDA's website but will negatively affect your cider's flavor). While waiting for it to cool is also a good time to dissolve your added sugars in the cider. You may want to ice-bath the pot to get it down to 70ºF faster (but keep it above your yeast's lower temp. limit). Now we can continue on to sanitize ze apparatus!

For Bleach Sanitizing: Use 1 Tb. bleach per gallon of water (4 ml / l ) and soak for twenty minutes. Rinse with distilled or boiled water.

For Iodine/StarSan/No Rinse Sanitizing: Follow the manufacturer's directions, remembering to drain throughly.


Step Two: Combine
If you're pulling your cider out of the fridge or just brought it home it you'll want to warm it slightly in a big stock pot and dissolve your added sugars. Alternately if it's already in glass you could leave it sealed and wait for it to come to room temp, pour yourself a glass, pour in your sugars and just shake like hell to combine the additional dissolved oxygen will help your yeasts' initial reproduction. Do not add additional flavorings (other than juice or juice concentrates) at this point, the fermentation process sometimes throws flavors off. Again we're aiming to get the cider up to around 70ºF. If necessary, transfer the cider to your carboy (sanitarily!) being sure to leave some head room for the bubbling fermentation. This is also when you would add any yeast nutrient or other things :wink:

{Some people mimic the tart apples traditionally used in ciders by adding tannic acid at about 1/4 tea. per gallon. Also available at brew supply stores 'acid blend' is typically a mix of citric, tartaric and malic acids for a more 'balanced' blend of acidity.}


Step Three: Pitching The Yeast
A standard dry yeast packet is 5g, enough for a five gallon fermenter bucket. For our one gallon batch we need ~1g - don't bother getting out the milligram scale but try to at least get close to 1/5 of the packet. {Alternately you can pick up a five gallon fermenter from your brew store and just scale the batch up.} Liquid cultures are also sold in vials large enough for 5 gal. batches so do the math on what 1/5 of the volume is, shake it up well and scale/measure appropriately. We pitch our yeast into the carboy, plug the hole with our bung and engage the airlock (filled to the fill line with vodka or sterile water). Now we play the waiting game. With added sugar you should see fermentation begin within about 6-12 hours.


Step Four: Racking
The racking process is necessary to give the cider some aging time away from the dormant yeast settling to the bottom as well as to beginning to separate the brew from all the sediment left behind from your cider or honey. Pouring off would agitate the sediment so siphoning is the best approach short of commercial filtering equipment. This is what we need our racking cane (a rigid plastic or glass tube which clips onto the mouth of your fermenter to allow you to position it just above the layer of sediment) for along with a few feet of rubber tubing, a second sanitized carboy, and optionally a bottling wand or a tube clamp for controlling the flow of the siphon. It's best to set the primary fermenter up on the shelf you'll be using at least a day before-hand to give the sediment as much time as possible to settle. A good rule of thumb for when to do your first racking is a) when the airlock is bubbling less than twice a minute or b) two weeks after pitching, whichever comes first.

You have three options for getting the siphon going: filling your racking cane and tubing with water to prime it, using an 'auto-siphon' (a specially designed hand pump) to start it, or just sucking on the ol' tube like you're siphoning gas - not something I'd recommend given that there is still some fermentation of sugars going on and we can't count on having a high enough alcohol concentration to kill off whatever nasty shit you might have in your mouth. I ended up buying a little starter racking kit with cane, tubing and a tube-clamp for holding the siphon closed but will likely buy a a small auto-siphon before I do too many more batches as priming 3' of 5/8" tubing attached to a cane is a pain in the ass. After the first racking you'll want to repeat the process every two weeks or until the wine or cider is completely still / fermented dry and you've gotten the sediment (or lees) done to a small enough layer you feel confidant you won't suck any up when siphoning into bottles (ya know, unless you're into that). You can't know for sure you've fermented dry (converted all the sugar to alcohol) without a hygrometer but you can visually assess the yeast activity by watching the formation of CO2 bubbles ebb and end.

Bottling, corking, capping or kegging will depend on your container choice and you should follow your equipment manufacturer's directions.


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Invisibleherman the kid
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Registered: 03/08/12
Posts: 148
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Re: Beginners' Guide To Homebrewing Meads and Ciders [Re: NizzyJones]
    #17122125 - 10/29/12 05:45 AM (11 years, 3 months ago)

I'm going to give this a try.
Thanks man!


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