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The following is a cider recipe I made, slightly tweaking a previous one I had. Just curious if this will produce a drink that is safe to drink and won't explode as a bottle bomb or any other crazy thing:

Before you begin make sure everything that will touch your cider is sanitized properly. Not cleaned, sanitized.

ingredients:

  • 1 gallon pasteurized apple cider (can use juice if no preservatives)
  • 2 cups brown sugar
  • 1 packet active dry yeast

  • 1 big pot

    Instructions:

  • Heat up a little bit of water to recommended temperature on yeast packet to activate yeast. Keep yeast in there for about 15 minutes or until ready to mix with rest of ingredients. Don’t need a lot of water, a quarter of a cup will do.

  • Boil 1 cup of water with 1.5-2 cups brown sugar, mix constantly until everything is dissolved. Keep boiling for at least 2-3 minutes.
  • Turn off heat.
  • Mix syrup and apple juice/cider first so temperature of your sugar mix/syrup is lowered and doesn’t kill yeast
  • Add yeast to mixture
  • Stir a lot to add oxygen into the mix
  • Put into gallon jug and add airlock. I personally put a plug on top that has a hole for hose attachment, and then make hose go into a Glass of water that is 75% filled with water
  • Wait 1 week
  • Boil .5 cups water with 2 tablespoons brown sugar. Make into syrup like before and wait until a lot of the water has evaporated and you are left with a syrup.
  • Siphon cider out cider into large pot and add the syrup you just made
  • Put everything into bottles. Grolsch bottles with flip cap work well here.
  • Wait 1 week and put in fridge.
  • Enjoy a cold one!
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Looks Fine.. almost.

You do need some yeast nutrients though. And.... 2 cups sugar to 1 gal puts you in Apple wine territory, and will be hard for a bakers yeast to attenuate fully. Also adding a priming sugar will do little with this recipe as the yeast will have died from its ABV tollerance.

When I make cider it's like this.

1) Sanitize everthing: fermentor, Apple juice bottles, sugar bags, wine yeast pack etc. Anthing that will touch the Apple juice

2) dump it all in the fermentor, and let it go

3) backsweeten and keg & serve cold. backsweetening can be an issue if bottle conditioning, solutions for that have been covered in other answers.

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  • Apple doesn't really need nutrients, yeast seems to love apple and hits it hard. The brown sugar is also providing extra nutrients via molasses. Apple also produces a very thick lees and takes forever to clarify. Not sure I like brown sugar for brewing though to be honest.
    – Escoce
    Apr 13, 2016 at 15:59
  • Escope, it depends on type yeast you're using. If I don't use nutrients (like FermaidO), usually my cider produces a large amount of SO2. Yes, it can be degassed either manually of naturally, but it makes it much easier with the right yeast like DV10 and some nutrients.
    – Trigger
    Apr 21, 2016 at 19:42

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