After Deb finished all the last batch, we thought we better get another one going, so that it has the next few months to prime, ready for summer. I took a different tack with this, using fresh juice. We also wanted to up the sweet flavour, as the last batch had a residual sourness from the Granny Smiths apples.

Ingredients

• 16 Lt Pure Apple Juice (no preservatives, pasteurised)
• 3 Lt Pure Apple & Pear Juice (no preservatives, pasteurised)
• 1kg Brown Sugar
• 200g Honey
• 130g Lactose
• 150g Maltodextrin
• 4x Cinnamon Sticks
• 20x cloves
• 2x nutmeg (ground)
• 5g Red Star Dry white wine yeast
• 4g Yeast nutrient

• OG: 1.066
• FG: 1.002

ALC/VOL 9.2% (pre-bottled)

I put all the spices in a small pot of water and boiled for about 20 mins, to extract spice essences and flavours.

I then added this spiced water to more water into a bigger pot (total 1Lt), and added the various sugars. I left it to cool, and added into fermenter with the juice to 22Lt. I then added yeast nutrient.

I rehydrated the yeast, and added to the fermenter (22-24°C).

This spent 3 weeks in the fermenter, and I was able to keep the temperature between 16-22°C (more or less kept at ~20°C). I then racked it into 115g raw sugar before bottling.

I’ll keep you posted on how it tastes – but from experience, cider needs a few months for it to be properly primed.