Author: Marshall Schott
A few months back, I posted about making a simple backsweetened hard cider. At least partially inspired by this article, a good buddy and fantastic brewer, Brad, decided to give it whirl with a couple changes– he fermented with Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast and threw in a 2 oz dry hop charge of Citra and Amarillo toward the end of fermentation. The resultant cider was, well, as my difficult-to-impress-with-alcoholic-beverages wife put it, “This is the best cider I’ve ever had, why can’t yours taste like this?” She finished the entire pint, something I’ve never seen her do. I’ve no clue what it feels like to be cheated on, and I certainly don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a whisper of pathetic impotence. I patched together my wounded ego and set out to prove myself.
Preparation for making hard cider couldn’t get much easier and starts by gathering your wares. I purchased 5 x 1 gallon bottles of my closest supermarket’s cheapest apple juice, which is preservative-free and has made good cider for me in the past.
Since my local brew shop doesn’t carry Wyeast, Brad offered to share some of what he harvested from a previous starter with me, hence the jar. I’m a dork about numbers and always take OG readings of the juice prior to fermenting it– 1.050 on the nose, perfect!
While you can certainly add simple sugars to boost the ABV, I prefer my hard cider a bit more sessionable, plus the lower OG usually requires less time to ferment and condition. I added 1.5 liters of apple juice to a sanitized flask, poured in the 3711 slurry, and let it spin with plans to harvest a pint for future use.
As one with a tendency to get hung-up on semantics, I have a hard time referring to cider making as “brewing,” it really only takes about 10 minutes, 9 of which consists of opening and pouring apple juice into a carboy. The open-and-pouring day went off without a hitch and the yeast was pitched.
Prior to making this cider, Brad informed me he fermented his at a fairly warm temperature, anywhere between 78˚F and 80˚F. This was my first and most significant departure from Brad’s process– I controlled the fermentation to 66°F because, well, that’s what I’d done in the past when using this yeast… to ferment a Saison. I always ramp temps as fermentation appears to slow anyway, I figured all would be fine.
A couple days after pitching the yeast, my airlock was bubbling slowly and there was nary a sign of krausen, some smallish bubbles on the surface of the cider. I wasn’t terribly concerned, I’d heard people speak of ciders not developing much krausen due to a lack of proteins.
In my experience making hard cider with SafAle S-04, things go gangbusters for the first 4 to 5 days then activity drops drastically, which is when I take an initial FG reading. I did the same with this batch.
Over 5 days of fermentation, the juice dropped a paltry .011 points. There went my plans to turn this cider around in time for a club meeting the following weekend. I immediately bumped the temp of the chamber to, ahem, 74°F and gave the cider a gentle swirl to kick some yeast back up into suspension. This led to a slight increase in visible activity. I left it alone for 11 days before taking another sample.
Knowing that Brad’s cider finished at 1.004, I was disappointed the see my hydrometer at a sweet 1.012. Urgh. I left it alone for another week, occasionally giving the plastic carboy a couple bumps toward the bottom to kick up some yeast.
The gravity was dropping, slowly but surely, I remained hopeful. After an entire month of fermenting, 3 of which were around 74°F, the FG was finally to a respectable 1.006.
Thankfully, the hydrometer sample tasted pretty damn good, not too sweet with no noticeable off-flavors. It was time to put the yeast to sleep by adding 1/2 tsp potassium metabisulfite and 2.5 tsp potassium sorbate, which I mixed into pre-boiled and chilled water.
After 24 hours, I added my dry hop charge of 46 grams (1.6 oz) Amarillo and 15 grams (.5 oz) CTZ. I actually had plenty of Galaxy on hand, but thought the blend of Amarillo and CTZ would be nice in a hard cider.
While I usually just throw dry hop additions directly into the carboy with no filtration, I decided to use a stainless mesh dry hop tube I received a few years back, mainly because I found it while cleaning up and was curious.
I let the hops sit in the cider for 3 days, cold crashing the day after adding them. At packaging time, I added 3 cans of apple juice concentrate to the keg then racked the hard cider on top using one of my favorite tools, the sterile siphon starter.
I’d used only 2 cans of concentrate to back-sweeten in the past, but Brad used 3 and my wife liked his, so…
I like my hard cider sparkling, so I hit it with 30 psi of CO2 for a full 2 days before reducing it to 20 psi for serving. This produced a very pleasing, almost champagne-like fizziness that left bubbles clinging to the side of the glass despite being very clean. The cider was crystal clear.
| IMPRESSIONS |
The first person, other than myself, to taste the cider was my beautiful and awesomely honest wife, Laura. She approached her first sip cautiously and allowed a meager amount between her lips. “Hmm, I can drink this one, but it’s different than Brad’s.”
Hey, I asked her to be totally honest, I guess I’m glad she wasn’t feeding me a line of bullshit. Personally, I thought my cider was pretty damn close to Brad’s, though the dry hop character may not have been as strong, which I blame on the fact I used that sheath thing– when removing and cleaning it, there was a fair amount of dry (not wet) hop matter packed in the middle.
I’ve since shared the cider with many friends, Brad included, all agreeing that it is really tasty. No one mentioned any flaws and the growlers always go fast. My personal opinion is that this is the best hard cider I’ve made, I can see myself using 3711 and dry hopping more often than not, it’s that good. I always tend to get sort of an orange-like character from Amarillo, which melded well with the subtle dankiness of the CTZ. I plan on dry hopping my next batch with Mosaic, one of my new favorite hop varieties.
If you like hops and you like hard cider, I highly recommend you give this a shot, it’s easy and very tasty. Cheers!
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45 thoughts on “Making a Good Thing Better | A Simple Dry Hopped Hard Cider”
Out of curiosity, did you add some yeast nutrient or something along with the juice? Pretty sure the juice would be pretty abysmal for FAN/ zinc/ calcium levels. Maybe that’s why it took a while to ferment to completion?
– Dennis, Life Fermented Blog
I didn’t, perhaps that would have helped, though as far as I know Brad didn’t use any nutrients either.
Came here to say the same thing: apple must is relatively nutrient-free for the yeast. If you want strong, healthy growth and fermentation you should always add yeast nutrient, especially if you’re going to make an all-juice starter. I use a mix of Fermaid-K and DAP, but Wyeast/White Labs nutrient would probably be fine too
Thanks, Derek, I’ll pick some up with my next MoreBeer order. Cheers!
Dammit, I just bottled six gallons yesterday. This would have been an awesome experiment. Thanks for sharing. Next time for sure I gotta try this.
That’s very interesting. I have made quite a few batches of hard cider by buying cider from a cider mill then adding yeast nutrient and yeast. The fermentation was always a lot faster than what you experienced.
I have never tried dry hopping the cider but I would like to try that. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Cheers!
Knowing what you know now, what is your future planned temperature schedule for fermentation?
With 3711… pitch and let it ride at ambient. Fuck control!
Too right. Those saison strains need the heat.
Been reading your site now frequently and love every post you make, thanks for a great side.
I plan on making this cider, with the 3711. I right now only have one fermentation chamber, which I’ll be using for a Saison I’ll be brewing from the same 3711. Would you recommend that I wait until the Saison has finshed, so I can put this in the fermentation chamber?
I have both rooms with 62 F and 72 F ambient temperature which I could just let it ferment at (uncontrolled then obviously).
With 3711, you’d probably be fine letting it ride at ambient.
Did you oxygenate the apple juice at pitching? Sounds like a normal brew, so any reason to not bubble in 02 like always?
I never use pure O2, but you could.
I made my first try at ciders by dumping it on light saison yeast cakes of 3711 and Belle Saison (a newish dry yeast). Nutrient, oxygen, and juice, 75-80F in the summer garage. The finished cider was great, though the two yeast characters had insufficient difference to tell them apart– which I attribute to the tartness of the apple. I kegged the two ciders together. They finished at 1.003-5
(The beers those two yeasts produced had a distinguishable difference, with 85% of people preferring the 3711, and the Belle Saison being ‘less complex’ or ‘more clean’. That difference in the beers seemed to decrease over time in bottles (3 months) until they were fully consumed.)
In summary, if you don’t have any 3711 sitting around or need to save a few bucks, Belle Saison dry works equally well for cider.
Hi,
I love the idea of both back-sweetening and dry-hopping cider. I’m wondering though how this would work with bottling if I wanted it sparkling. Would I simply add a bit of dry yeast at bottling time? This is assuming that the potassium metabisulfate and potassium sorbate halts all yeast activity so they don’t eat up the apple juice concentrate.
Any thoughts on adding a gram or so of dry yeast at bottling?
Bottle conditioning back-sweetened hard cider is a bit tricky, though not impossible. First off, you would not use metabisulfate or sorbate. Rather, you’d add the concentrate to your bottling bucket and bottle as usual, test the carb level regularly by opening bottles, then once it’s to where you want it, you heat pasteurize (place bottles in a hot water bath). It’s tough and I’ve heard usually leads to at least some broken bottles, but it can be done. Easier yet, just use an unfermentable sugar to back-sweeten, something like lactose or Splenda are popular choices.
I’m not sure it’s at all necessary to add yeast at bottling time.
Thanks for the quick reply, I’m sure I could have found that out with a little searching. Up til now I’ve been making “Apfelwein” (popular recipe on Homebrewtalk) but most people I serve it to find it too dry/sour (I actually love it but do understand the complaint). I’d really like to try your recipe but don’t think I’ll go the route you describe. Instead I’ll just start kegging! Maybe I’ll try lactose, although I’m not sure what kind of sweetness it imparts, I”ll have to check that.
Cheers
I made EdWort’s Apfelwine once… never again. I hated it. That batch is actually what inspired me to simplify things by fermenting just AJ with ale yeast, now I almost always have some on tap.
I recently set up my keg system so now I’m very interested to make this.
I was thinking that if I cold crash the cider and store at no greater than 36°F in the keezer then would halting the yeast activity using potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite even be necessary? Wouldn’t the low temperature essentially do the same thing?
I’d add apple juice concentrate and force carb in the keg.
I guess stopping the yeast with the chemical additions is a nice insurance policy but is there any reason to believe that they’d ferment away at those sugars at that low temp? Actually now that I think of it I’m planning to use WLP820 for this batch so maybe that would complicate my hypothesis?
I actually tried this once and won’t be doing it again. The cold cider going into the keg was super clear but turned a bit hazy a couple days after packaging with 3 jars of concentrate, leading me to believe (no proof) fermentation was happening. The sorbate and metabisulfite are so cheap and easy to use, I see no reason not to.
That said, I know of a few people who swear by this method.
great thanks. you’re right it’s a cheap and easy insurance policy. I’m honestly just glad to be able to make sweet cider without pasteurizing bottles!
I did this the 20th of Mars. Starting OG of 1.048. Pitched a nice good, clean slurry of 3711, wyeast yeast nutrition and some O2.
For the first day the ambient temperature was about 18°c. Then after a day I put it in a room with a temperature of about 23-25°c. A week later, 27th of Mars the gravity was down to 0.998. I decided that was the final gravity and cold crashed and then kegged two days later.
I added 1 concentrate to 10L, the gf didn’t think it was sweet enough so I added another.
Can’t wait to see how this will be in a couple of days.
Nice! You may need to give the keg a gentle shake to incorporate the concentrate, it has a tendency to settle to the bottom.
I just found your site in the last week… Great info here! I started a batch of this cider today and even followed your process of saving some extra yeast from my starter.
Hey there – curious to hear whether you’ve tried this since and at what ferm temp. If not, would you go all the way to 79?!
I have and I did, it worked out well!
Did you/have you used gelatin to clear things up in your ciders? Clarity is excellent.
I entered this cider in a local and got 1st place in the cider /mead category. I dry hopped with 1.5 ounces of Citra and 1.5 ounces Amarillo!
Set out to make a cider that the wife would enjoy, so I used this recipe. Last year I tried making cider and back-sweetening with Xylitol, but it just didn’t turn out right. This time I borrowed a keg from a buddy so I could back sweeten and force-carbonate. Dry hopped with 1oz citra and 1oz amarillo. Turned out great! She really likes it. Just bottled some off the keg on Saturday, interested to see how well they keep the carbonation. Thanks!
I see you racked of your fermentation carboy into a 5 gallon Corny keg. Did you rack into two kegs or did you have less than 5 gallons once fermentation and dry hopping were complete?
Thanks for the awesome Cider entry.
Only 5 gal to a single keg. Cheers!
Thoughts or comments on if there are any benefits to racking off the yeast cake into a secondary fermentor for a spell (2-3 weeks) before adding the metabisulfite and sorbate?
I don’t think it has any positive impact, but I know folks who do it out of habit and make good cider/beer.
I plan on making Graff with 50/50 wort and apple juice. I use RO water and build a water profile from there but being that this is half cider I don’t know what levels of calcium, chloride or sulfide I should achieve. Just enough to balance pH? Right now they’re all around 50 ppm. Thanks.
That’s what I’d do… but I’ve never made Graff.
have you used gelatin to clear things up in your ciders?
Do it every time, though not sure how much it helps.
When do you use gelatin? Before or after dry hopping? I am going to make a dry hopped cider soon and was curious about when to add gelatin.
After. Buuuut, I don’t use gelatin on cider much anymore, it always seem to clear quickly anyways.
Good to know. I will give it a go without. I am going to try a blend of Amarillo and Fuggle. Just have to free up a carboy first.
I don’t give a shit if my wife enjoys my cider.
Made this recipe last month from fresh pressed apple juice. Just got done dry hopping last weekend tasting this week. So delicious.
I used 1 oz of each hop variety you mentioned just because that’s what each packet was sold in. I also made a 3 gallon batch rather than 5 with 1.5 cans of apple juice concentrate. A tad bit sweet for me but still awesome.
Who knew a dry hopped cider would be so damn tasty.
How did you get it fully carbed in 2 days though? I’ve got it going at 30 PSI for a couple days and it’s still not finished.
If I don’t have a co2 tank could I use fiz tabs to create carbonation
Great article! What is the FG after you have performed the back sweetening? Have you ever measured after adding one, two or three cans of the juice concentrate?
Thank you
Did you adjust your ph at all for this cider? I’m almost done fermenting and the ph looks in the low 4s