hard apple cider

Our apartment is a-bubbling with the sounds of fermentation! A while ago, organic apple cider was on sale at the grocery store--packaged in big glass gallon jugs, perfect for brewing hard apple cider. I finally got around to starting it the other day.

I loosely followed this recipe. Usually we use honey when making wine/mead, but I decided to try sugar this time. In my opinion, everything but the sugar and the yeast is optional: I omitted the pectic enzyme and yeast energizer because those didn't come with our garage sale'd brewing kit. I did use the optional campden tablet--it kills any wild strains of yeast and reduces the chance of having potentially good or bad "off flavors." Campden tablets can also be used to de-chlorinate tap water. If you do use a campden tablet or other sulphite, it may be a good idea to wait 24 hours before pitching the yeast.

I poured some cider out of each jug so that they didn't foam up into the airlock, but it happened anyway, so I had to stir down the bubbles a couple times. I'm going to try ice distilling one jug into applejack and maybe make the other one a sweet hard cider with bubbles.

Oh, leave a comment if you have a good recipe for ginger beer or root beet--I'd love to try those out. Maybe I'll try making the famous D 'n' B--Dandelion and Burdock--there sure is a surplus of those two plants! I could go for a cold crisp Cel-Ray too. So much to do--let the fermentation begin!