Making Cider

Amongst my friends, there are several who make their own beer, cider and other alcoholic drinks. To say that I’ve caught the bug is putting it mildly – I’ve been toying with the idea of making some sort of boozy beverage for months. After a few timing issues, I finally managed to get a batch of hard cider brewing. The recipe I used was sent to me by my good friend Phil in Toronto.

I started out with 8L Rougemont “Mellow-Doux” juice, a big cup of strong Tibetan organic black tea, 400g of white sugar, and a packet of EC-1118 Champagne yeast. I had originally planned on a regular batch, which would’ve been 4L of juice and 200g of sugar, but because the carboy I had was pretty big I decided to put together a double-batch. I used a bit of the water boiled for the tea to make a paste out of the sugar, so that it would be easier to pour in to the carboy.



I put the tea, sugar, and most of the juice in to the carboy. The reserved juice was put in the bowl that had the sugar, and I put the yeast in on top to bloom. Once it was warmed up, it got dumped in with the rest of the mix. Once that was done, out came the funnel and in went the airlock. The carboy got moved down to the basement to get the fermenting going.





After only one day of sitting, the yeast is already well on its way to producing some tasty beverage. I have some 1L beer bottles with the flip-top lid (like a Grolsh bottle), and once those are filled, the remainder will get bottled in regular beer bottles.






And with that, I begin my first adventure in brewing. I’ll make sure to report on the progress, and the (hopefully) tasty results!