Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Sanitize everything.
- Heat ½ gallon of apple juice in a pot on medium heat, do not boil.
- Add the brown sugar and stir to dissolve, then remove the pot from the heat.
- In the empty one gallon brewing jug, add the cinnamon stick, cloves and raisins.
- Pour the warm cider from the pot into the one gallon brewing jug using the funnel. Allow the warm cider to steep with the spices for about 20 minutes.
- Top off the jug with the remaining ½ gallon of apple juice, leaving 2 inches of space at the top of the jug. There will be some leftover juice.
- Cap the jug and shake to combine everything.
- Check temperature regularly. Add ½ package of yeast to the jug when the juice has cooled to 90°F, (it doesn’t have to be exact). Store the opened package with the remaining yeast in the refrigerator for later use.
- Cap the jug again and shake, shake, shake for about a minute or two to aerate the yeast.
- Attach the airlock to the rubber stopper if you haven’t already, fill it with water to the fill line, then place it firmly on the top of the jug.
- Put the jug in a cool (not cold) place out of direct sunlight to ferment. Maybe a pantry or laundry room. After several hours, or overnight, you will start to see bubbles forming in the jug and airlock.
- Allow the cider to ferment for 3-4 weeks, until the bubbling in the jug and airlock has stopped.
- Bottle your cider!
How To Bottle Your Cider: Requires Tow People
- Sanitize and dry everything.
- Attach one end of the tubing to the auto siphon and the other end to the bottling wand.
- Put the jug of cider onto the counter and one person will put the auto siphon into the jug without touching the sediment on the bottom.
- Put the bottles on a towel on the floor below the gallon jug. Use gravity.
- Put the bottling wand into one of the bottles. Person 1 will pump the siphon two or three times to get the cider flowing.
- Pull the bottling wand up when the cider gets about an inch from the top of the bottle. The flow will stop immediately.
- Repeat this process for each bottle.