October 8, 2010
This week I picked up 26 gallons of unpasteurized cider from Phantom Farms that is now fermenting away in the basement. In a couple of months, the cider will be transformed into a plethora of hard cider varieties. While I won’t disclose what I’m doing for our eager cider drinkers at this juncture, but I can say that there will be some new recipes to test out on some discerning palates along with some traditional staples that you’ve all been accustomed to!
-Josh
October 28, 2009
I picked up my allotment of apple cider today from Phantom Farms in Cumberland, RI which will be fermented to try to retain my title for the third year in a row…
-Josh
February 22, 2009
…as some of you know, every year I make my own hard cider. I was going to Hyland Orchard out in Sturbridge, MA when I lived up in Worcester, but this year I was able to find a RI vendor. Phantom Farms up in Cumberland was able to sell me 30 gallons- I dropped off my sanitized glass containers and they filled them with cider- right off the press. Although the cider fermenting process isn’t all that in depth, there are a few key steps that have to be taken to ensure the cider ferments properly…the first one being sanitization. Everything that touches (or has the potential to) the cider has to be thoroughly sanitized with an iodine based sanitizer. I like the iodine because it is a no rinse solution, so you end up using half the water you normally would because you don’t have to rinse…
Here is a typical container that I use to get the cider and also ferment with…this one is a 6.5 gallon glass carboy that has some raw cider in it…as you can see the raw cider is pretty opaque due to all the particulates that are present in the liquid…
Here I am heating up a gallon of the raw cider to 170 degrees to dissolve the sugar that I add to help produce the alcohol. I add about a pound of sugar per gallon of cider (it could be white or brown sugar- or even honey) to give the yeast a little more nutrients to do their thing.
After all the sugar has dissolved, the solution needs to be brought down to a temperature that can support the propagation of the yeast colony…which happens to be around 75 degrees. The thing is, you want to lower the temperature as quick as possible because this is the time where the cider is most vulnerable to infection…other contaminants such as bacteria or outside yeast can make their way into the cider if left exposed for long enough time. The coil you see in the pot is hooked up to the faucet- cold water circulates through the copper coil which exchanges heat from the cider to the water flowing through it. The hot water exits into the sink through the clear hose at the end of the coil.
Once the cider is cool, it is added back into the carboy along with a yeast culture. The yeast that you use determines a bunch of parameters about the final product- dryness, alcohol content and carbonation can all be controlled by the yeast. The picture above shows the particulate matter settling out a few minutes after the yeast is pitched.
Now the wait begins…the cider is kept in a place where the temperature is constant- around 65 degrees. An airlock on top of the carboy allow the CO2 from the fermentation process to escape, but doesn’t allow any outside air into the container. The primary fermentation can take up to a couple of weeks and then the cider is transferred to another carboy and allowed to sit for up to two months…this allows the particulates to settle to the bottom of the container making for a clear final product…
