Same thing I used to do. I have a press and grinder. I usually use local apples gotten for free and add brown sugar. I have used champagne yeast and primed the bottles for a very dry fizzy cider that tasted very much like champagne. My Wif likes a fizzy sweet cider so next time I back sweetened with a none fermenting sweetener and put in primed bottles. Didn't like the fake taste. Finally did just like you. Fermented totally dry with Whites Old English cider yeast. Use a wine conditioner to kill the yeast and back sweeten with concentrate. Rack to a Corny Keg and pressure carbonate. Then use a beer gun to fill snap cap bottles. Let it sit a couple weeks then watch it disappear! Mildly sweet and fizzy at about 9 % or a bit more. We have been going through a period of cleaning out the garage. I decided to get out of the hard cider business and sold my kegs, pressure bottles and beer gun. Just don't have a convenient place to do all the brew work! On the block now are about 10, twenty bottle cases of snap caps and a bunch of misc. brewing equipment and carboys. I will keep the press, of course, and still do rough cider. Every once in a while we have a cider pressing and all the neighbors and friends come over. Have since motorized the press. Me, in the background, where the boat says "ME".
First we sanitize the clean car boy. Plastic only, I have a “past” with glass carboys. Then heat dissolve 1# of brown sugar into 1/2 gallon of cider. This will give us about 7% abv. Dump the rest of 5 gallons in. Add the yeast. Now I hold 65-70 and let it ferment for a month. Super easy to make hard cider. No cooking. Fancy juice is fine but store bought is just great too.
Good question. It was just me. There were some fruit flies floating around so maybe that’s the “we”! That first photo of sanitizing the carboy is an iodine solution.
I grew tired of cleaning and filling bottles so I go straight from fermenter to a keg where I first kill the yeast and then carbonate with carbon dioxide gas. Takes 3 days at 30 psi for commercial level fizz. Then, if I need to fill a bottle for a gift or travel I just fill it from the keg and cap the bottle or growler. You can bottle the flat cider, some people like that, or you can throw a specific amount of sugar in with the cider before capping the bottle and the yeast will eat that and fizz up your bottle. Sometimes the bottles explode!
Here is day 2 of fermentation. 24 hours into it. The cider has grown light in color from all of the suspended and feasting yeast. The airlock is bubbling every 2 seconds shooting out apple farts. It will pretty much look like this for a month until the yeast runs out of food and settles to the bottom. The foam on top of cider is much whiter and cleaner than beer foam. The whole yeast reaction is much faster with beer. It only takes 2-3 days to ferment.
I made 2 - three gallon batches this weekend.... will see how it rolls... one batch was with Musselmans Cider & the other was with a local orchard cider... I used Nottingham yeast. Started bubbling already by Sunday morning.
