During the last IBU meeting, one of the members, Mike, brought in a hard cider for a few of us to try. I’m not usually a fan of hard ciders, but I gave it a try. It was fantastic, and with a dead simple recipe, it’s easy for brewers of all skill levels. I started a batch that day.

Batch size: 5 gallons ABV: ~7.5% Timeline: 4–6 weeks fermenter to glass

Ingredients

  • 5 gallons apple cider: Cub Foods, Indian Summer, or similar. “The cheapest stuff you can find.” Just make sure it has no added potassium sorbate.
  • 2 lbs light or dark brown sugar
  • Dry ale yeast: I used Safale S-04, though Mike says it doesn’t matter much
  • 2½ tsp potassium sorbate (for secondary)
  • 2 vanilla beans, split, scraped, and chopped (for secondary)
  • 2 cans apple juice concentrate (for kegging)

Fermentation

  1. Sanitize your fermenter
  2. Add brown sugar to the fermenter
  3. Pour apple cider over the sugar: this mixes and aerates in one step
  4. Pitch yeast
  5. Ferment until done, usually to 1.000 or slightly above

Secondary

  1. Sanitize a secondary fermenter
  2. Add 2½ tsp potassium sorbate to prevent further yeast activity
  3. Add vanilla beans
  4. Rack cider onto the potassium sorbate and vanilla beans
  5. Let sit for a week

Kegging

  1. Sanitize a keg
  2. Warm frozen concentrate slightly on the stove, or bring liquid concentrate to room temperature, and pour into the bottom of the keg
  3. Rack cider on top of the concentrate
  4. Hit with 30 psi to seal the lid and purge headspace

Adjusting the amount of concentrate affects final sweetness. Mike recommends at least six weeks from fermenter to glass, though four weeks works in a pinch.

A note on vanilla beans: They can be hard to find locally and often expensive when you do. I had good luck ordering from the Arizona Vanilla Company on eBay: good quality, reasonable prices.