Last year, we bought eleven gallons of cider which we made into hard cider. We have now started our second year of making hard cider, and I thought it would be useful to recap where we are with the process.

Of the cider we made in 2008, we still have about a quarter of it. Mostly, these are the sample bottles that I will check to see how well they came up after sitting around for a year and after I’ve had more of a chance to experiment with different approaches. We probably used about half of it ourselves, either for drinks with dinner, or sometimes in cooking. The other half we gave away. Often this would come in the form of bringing cider to a party, and we’d have some of the cider at the party.

My current estimate is that it costs us about $2 for the ingredients for a large bottle of cider, and another $2 for the bottle itself. However, for the bottles we use ourselves, as well as some of the bottles we bring to parties or other events, we reuse the bottles. The small bottles probably cost a dollar each for the ingredients and a dollar each for the bottle.

Our first batch was a five gallon batch. We used champagne yeast and started the fermentation on Oct. 25th. During the fall and winter months, we keep our house on the cool side, and we didn’t rack off the cider to its second fermentation until November 18th. The yeast had pretty well used up all of the sugar and the second fermentation ended up being mostly a few days of the yeast settling out.

The first batch ended up still, dry and a clear pale yellow. It was quite good, but I think I like sparkling hard cider better. When we bottled the first batch, we added one twelfth fresh cider to provide a little sugar for the yeast to use to make carbon dioxide in the bottles. I decided to do this instead of adding sugar in an effort to keep the cider a little more pure. One twelfth fresh cider was way too much and the fizzy version of the first batch was way too fizzy. We still have a few bottles of fizzy batch one, and it will be interesting to see if it still as fizzy.

We started our second batch for the 2008 year on November 22nd. This time, we used a Belgium Lambic yeast. We started off with six gallons and let it ferment for twenty two days. With the cool temperature of our house, there was still a bit of sugar in the cider at this point. Since we were racking from a six gallon carboy to a five gallon carboy, we bottled off several bottles after the first fermentation. It turned out to be a much sweeter fizzy hard cider with a much fruitier flavor. It also ended up being a bit more cloudy.

I don’t have notes about how much longer we let the second batch go through a second fermentation, but it remains slightly cloudy, but with a nice fizz and taste.

On to 2009: On September 13th, we purchased another six gallons of cider. Unfortunately, the brew store where we like to get our yeast was closed, so we didn’t add the yeast until the 14th. This time we used a Belgian Trappist yeast. It has been warm since the 14th this cider fermented quickly. At one point, the foam was getting into the fermentation lock and we had to clean things out. Now, the fermentation has pretty much come to a stop. So, we will rack off some of the cider this afternoon and put the rest into a second fermentation. This time, we bottled about a gallon and a half after the first fermentation. We’ve added two cups of maple syrup to the cider for the second fermentation to boost the sugar content to make this a stronger hard cider. I’m hoping this will work well with the Trappist yeast. With that, I am starting to think about batch two for 2009. Anyone out there have thoughts or comments on other things to try?