What's your favourite cider?

Thanks for the topic and the recommendations. I'm a little bit jealous of all your choices.

 

The Manitoba Liquor Commission only stocks the Blackthorn, Extra Hard Green Apple and the Granny Smith, none of which are especially great ciders in my opinion.  I'm hoping they may be able to bring in some of your favourites. 

 

 

I'm thinking it might be a little bit more complicated than that but it also sounds like it would be worth the effort, thanks for the recipe.  I'm wondering though why using the champagne yeast be "slumming it"

There is a pub in Kingston, officially called "The Kingston Brewing Company" but that the locals just know as "The Brew Pub".  When I lived there, they had Snake Bite on tap.  (I think they might have mixed their Dragon's Breath with Strongbow or something, can't remember).  As someone who doesn't like beer, however, I didn't like it much.  But it's a huge favourite, so if you're a beer person AND a cider person, I'm sure it's delicious.

Gee, what a coincidence. ;)

Anyhow, yeah, it was WAY better than in the can, although it's not bad in the can either.

I'm curious about what people consider to be good food pairings with different types of cider.  Personally, I can drink any of them with pretty much anything, but for instance, I find that the dry ciders go particularly well with greasy pub grub type stuff (like fish and chips).

ennir, I assure you, it's not any more complicated than that. And you will be amazed at how good it tastes (you will regret, but are perfectly able, to cut the recipe in half or in four). I only say 'slumming it' because Montrachet yeast is harder to find. Champagne yeast will yield great results too. Mix them all, put them in a carboy with an airlock (total investment about 25$ or less on Craigslist) and enjoy!

I'm not a fan of the Irish soda pop ciders like Bulmers and Strongbow. I like dry English cider, or cloudy cask cider. When cider is good, it is very, very good.

Grower's Peach

I'm reminded of a cider product from my youth called 'Light 'n Easy'.  I have recollections as a teenager of drinking it the local park well before noon with my friends who were skipping summer school.

God was it awful.  You could feel the hangover right through the bottle.  I hope they no longer make it.

I often wonder how I turned out as well as I did.

 

 

I make my own apple juice (apples and water in a really powerful blender). Could I use that? Or would I need to strain out the pulp? 

And how would I store it? Do I need a bunch of glass bottles and one of those capper things? 

Thanks for the recipe, by the way . I'm going to try it.

 

That's very helpful. Thank-you! 

Being a BC girl who can't drink wine or beer, I favour Okanagan peach or cherry. There is zero good selection for BC ciders here in Trawna, so every suitcase coming back from the Coast is stuffed with it.

On the dry apple cider side, this summer I came across "Stutz" in the Annapolis Valley.. .dry with sweet overtones, light but lovely apple taste. It's not available here, alas.

I was disappointed with Wapoos but Ironwood isn't bad. Applewood Winery near Stouffville does a nice dry raspberry /apple cider with their own produce. Worth a trip-- they're very friendly and their mead is to die for.

Scrumpy! When I was in the Cotswolds for my gran's funeral about seven years ago, we went to a 500 year old local pub to toast her. I went to the bar to ask about local scrumpy. Well moi dear, says they, you're 'ere at the roight toime as the locals is all ready fer drinkin. They lined up seven glasses on the bar for a taste, each made by different local sources and apples. By the end I was wobbling and they wouldn't accept a pence from me.

Yeah, that's right. It'll need to condition in the bottles for at least one week, preferably two, before the yeast has time to digest the new dextrose to produce CO2. Because the bottle is under pressure, the CO2 is dissolved in the cider rather than escaping out the airlock of the carboy. If you like, you can bottle after one month in the carboy and then you can track the taste as it ages--the problem with this is that usually you just end up drinking all the cider right away. Which is as much of a "problem" as Green Grouch probably not being able to remember which Cotswold cider was her favourite...

So, here's the easiest way:

1. Dissolve 2 pounds (6 cups) of dextrose (corn sugar) in 5 gallons (19L) of 100% pure, no preservative, Apple juice and put in a sanitized carboy. You can of course do as little as 1 gallon, but it's as easy to make a large amount as it is a small.
2. Add one 5 gram packet of virtually any kind of dry wine yeast, but Montrachet and Champagne are best, in that order. If you prefer a sweeter cider, you can use a neutral ale yeast like Nottingham which will ferment out sweeter. Make sure it all goes in.
3. Cap with an airlock half filled with water or cheap vodka. This allows air (CO2) to escape while keeping a seal on the bottle.
4. It will ferment in less than two weeks, but leave it for at least a month. I usually leave it for three. The spent yeast cells will gather at the bottom of the carboy. Fermenting between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (18-21C) is best, but read the yeast packet for best temps. Anything above 80 F (27 C) and it will produce evident off flavours.
5. When you want to bottle, siphon the cider into a big stock pot (at least 19L!) or food-grade sanitized plastic bucket (although sanitation isn't as big an issue now, because your cider is loaded with alcohol), leaving the sedimented yeast behind in the carboy.
6. Taste the cider. If it's too dry for your taste, you can add a non-fermentable sugar like lactose or 'wine conditioner' at this point to get the desired sweetness. Add 3/4 cup of dextrose, dissolved in an equal amount of boiled water and mix well. This sugar will ferment and produce CO2 (i.e. bubbles). If you have aged it in the carboy for more than two months, you'll need to add another packet of yeast to get bubbles.
7. Bottle immediately, either in sanitized wine bottles (probably easiest, but you will need a corker from your local wine-making shop), Grolsch-type swing-top bottles, or growler jugs (with tight, tight seals--this could be hard if you like really bubbly cider). Bottling can be done with the proper equipment, just a siphon tube, or even just a funnel, a pitcher and steady hand.
8. Wait two weeks--enough CO2 will be produced after one week to 'pop' the cap or cork, but the second week will dissolve the gas in the cider. The cider will get better with age: the yeast drops out and the apple flavours really come into their own. My best schedule is two months in the carboy, four months in the bottle.
9. Drink the best damn cider you've ever tasted.
10. Start a second batch because you will drink all the cider you have disturbingly quickly.

This will yield cider about 8.5% abv. If you leave out the two pounds of dextrose, it will be about 6%. Consume with caution. Babbling is not advised post-consumption.

This recipe is for filtered apple juice, but virtually anything will work, including apple 'cider' (unfiltered apple juice, essentially--the sediment eventually settles to the bottom of the fermenting vessel and your cider goes clear). I've only used apple juice and cider before, but people report using apple-grape juice, apple-cranberry, apple-peach juice with great success. It's so easy, and you can't go wrong.

ETA: Also don't put the carboy anywhere you need to breathe. For the first two weeks or so, it's a gonna stink.

 

Okay, so later yesterday afternoon after posting in this thread, I had a change of plans for the weekend and ended up having to rent a car in order to go to Trenton to visit my mom.  (We were going to catch a ride another way but those plans fell through.)

So...on the way to Trenton this morning, we stopped in - you guessed it, Stouffville!  I thought, what the heck, I hardly ever have a car, and no transit goes close enough to the place, so we decided to go up to the Applewood Winery on Green Grouch's recommendation.  Delicious mead and cider!  We got a flat of the cider and a couple of bottles of the mead, which I agree, is to die for.

Thanks so much for the recommendation!

I'd love to try Sir Perry. Some of the posters here may not know that perry is the proper name for fermented pear beverage, so it isn't such a gimmicky name. Perry is poiré in French. It is very delicate and very good, whether made in France or England (don't know if it is made elsewhere in the UK). Good perry isn't more than a bit sweet. I'm looking forward to picking some up next time I'm in Ontario (most likely in Ottawa). Growers cider is soda pop - yecch. We have very good dry apple ciders here, but they aren't cheap. I don't like sweet beverages, hot or cold, alcoholic or not. Neat tea, black coffee, dry wine, cider and perry. Alas, while I appreciate fine beers, I can't digest beer well - just one and I feel bloated for hours.

Breton cider is available here in Québec, and we have many dry local ciders, some very fine indeed, and some of which are very similar to the Breton type.

There is a local foods shop in Jean-Talon Market that also sells Québec ciders, meads and wines (as well as microbrewery beers). Québec wine is not worth the price - Ontario is as local as I'll go - but there is excellent cider. I've never had mead (honey wine) I don't find too sweet, even the so-called "dry" styles, but I hate sweet drinks, boozy or not.

There's also a blueberry one from Newfoundland that is delicious. Can't remember the name. Newfoundland also makes an amazing blueberry wine. And for some reason, it's actually kosher so thats what I always bring when visiting an observant family for dinner.