Fall is upon us and Winter is not to far off, so why not kick of the season with a nice glass of spiced winter cider. This is a simple cider that I like making around the holidays, and is based off of the recipe found at home brew talk forums.
There are some changes that I made to the recipe from what is listed on the forum. For starters I did not use sweet gale, or a yeast nutrient. I did not find a need for the nutrient because the yeast stayed fairly active through the whole fermentation. The other change I made was to not use water when making the concentrate, I ended up using a little more than a half gallon of apple juice and boiling the sugar, Cinnamon sticks, and nutmeg in that. I am getting a head of myself now, so lets get a list going of what we will need.
- 5 Gallons Apple Juice (Pasteurized not Preserved) I use Motts.
- 2lbs Dark Brown Sugar
- 5 Cinnamon Sticks
- 1 tps Nutmeg
- English ale Yeast (I have used WLP002 liquid, but I have also had really good success with dry)
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Now that you have your shopping list, lets get to the brewing. Start by pouring a little more than a half gallon into a clean pan. Keep the heat relatively low to start we don’t want anything to burn. Next you are going to add the brown sugar and cinnamon sticks, keep the heat low until all the ingredients are in the pan, and mixed well. Start to kick up the heat but keep a constant stir going, making sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan. Keep stirring the mixture once you get a slow boil, set your timer for 10mins. Keep stirring periodically to make sure the mixture does not stick. At the 10 minute mark kill the heat, remove your cinnamon sticks, add your teaspoon of nutmeg, and let it sit for another minute. After that time cool the mixture down to about 75-80 degrees (F).
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While the concentrate is cooling add the 4 gallons of apple juice to your carboy. I use a glass carboy when making cider because it will not hold flavors like plastic buckets will; if you have a designated bucket for cider that will work too.
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Once the mixture has been cooled take and add the mixture to your carboy, you can either stir it up or shake the carboy, add your yeast and add the rest of the apple juice to top it off. Give that carboy a good shake, that will stir in your yeast and make sure you get some oxygen in there for your yeast.
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Leave the Cider to ferment for about 2-3 weeks, you can back sweeten if needed, I have found that the cider did not need to be sweeten because the English Ale yeast does not dry out the juice as much as a champagne yeast would. If you have other ideas or suggestions that would make this recipe better please email us and let us know.