Tag Archives: hard cider

Tao’s Hard Lemonade Cider

Out of all the things I brewed last year, this was the most popular.  It was also the easiest, fastest, and cheapest to do.  I’ve tweaked the recipe a little, but here’s the recipe for my hard lemonade cider.  This should give you around 10% alcohol, and cost about $17/5 gallons.  5 gallons is about 50 12oz. bottles and American beer for example is typically ~5%.  This means you’re only paying about $0.17/beer equivalent of alcohol.  This is much tastier than typical American beer.

 

Ingredients

  • 5 cans 6 cans frozen lemonade concentrate w/o potassium sorbate
  • 5 cans 4 cans frozen apple juice concentrate w/o potassium sorbate
  • 3.5lbs table sugar
  • 1 packet champagne yeast
  • 5 tsps. yeast nutrient
  • 2.5 tsps potassium sorbate
  • 2.5 tsps. pectic enzyme (optional)
  • 1 campden tablet (optional)
Equipment
  • ~4 gallon pot
  • (2) 5 gallon bucket
  • (1) 5 gallon bucket lid
  • Air lock for bucket lid
  • Large stirring spoon
  • 3-4′ of 1/2″ inner diameter tubing for racking (optional)
  • Specific density meter (optional)

 

Directions

  1. Clean your bucket, lid, spoon, and large pot well with antibacterial soap and/or a little bleach.
  2. Heat up about 2 gallons of water.  It doesn’t have to boil, but it should be steaming at least.
  3. Stir in 2lbs of sugar, or half of a 4lb bag of sugar and make sure it dissolves completely.
  4. Depending on the size of your pot you can add the cans of juice concentrate into that or pour the hot sugar water into your 5 gallon bucket and then mix in the concentrate.  I like to mix it in the pot to melt the concentrate faster, but it doesn’t matter really.
  5. If you haven’t already pour the sugar/juice mix into the 5 gallon bucket and pour in enough water to make it 5 gallons total.  The 5 gallon mark is right about level with where the bucket handle usually attaches.
  6. Wait until the mix has cooled to roughly room temperature or a little warmer and stir in the yeast nutrient as well as the pectic enzyme and crush campden tablet if you’re using them. (The pectic enzyme makes the brew more clear.  The campden tablet is to protect against other bacteria or yeast getting in your mix.)
  7. Put the bucket in a room temperature area out of direct sunlight and wait 24 hours.
  8. If you’re using a specific density meter to measure the final alcohol content, you’ll want to measure now and record it.
  9. Add the champagne yeast by just sprinkling it on top and then make sure lid is tightly sealed and air lock has water in it and makes a good seal on the lid.
  10. Wait about 2 weeks, it can be faster or slower depending on the temperature.  Ideal is around 75F degress.  After a day or two the air lock will start to bubble as the brew ferments and makes the precious alcohol.  When the air lock stops bubbling after a week to 10 days or so you’ll want to let it sit for an additional 2 days to let the yeast settle out.
  11. You now have very dry hard lemonade cider.  The yeast will have eaten just about all of the sugar and turned it into alcohol.  This is the time to measure the specific density again.  By comparing it to the previous measurement you can calculate the percent alcohol accurately.
  12. Now we want to sweeten it, but if we add more sugar the yeast will just eat that too.  Stir in 2.5 tsps of potassium sorbate to force the yeast into dormancy.
  13. Wait a day or two for the yeast to go dormant
  14. Rack(ie siphon) the lemonade/cider into the other freshly cleaned 5-gallon bucket using the also freshly cleaned tubing.  The key is to get the tubing positioned about 1/2″ from the bottom of the bucket with the cider so you don’t siphon out all the yeast and other fermenting biproducts that have settled to the bottom.  (You don’t necessarily have to do this, but you’ll want to carefully pour off the lemonade/cider and leave as much of the dregs behind in the first bucket as you can.)
  15. Stir in sugar to taste.  This will be roughly 1.5 lbs of sugar depending on taste.
  16. Bottle it or just drink it straight from the bucket
  17. Thank your buddy Tao for sharing his wonderful recipe.

That’s it.  It only takes about 2 weeks altogether.  Beer takes a month, 2 weeks to ferment and 2 weeks to carbonate in the bottle.  Because this isn’t carbonated it takes half the time and doesn’t  have to be bottled at all.  Let me know what you think!