A Simple Cider

I was in the local Brew Shop the other day, and there was a carboy sitting there which was a brand new cider fermenting.  Basically, two gallons of cider straight into a carboy and yeast was added.  In a few weeks, it should be ready to drink.  Can it really be that easy?  Maybe so.

Inspired, I decided to do something similar.  We went to Target and found only 1 remaining gallon of the cider, but there was also a smaller glass jar of organic apple cider.  The jar was cool and could work for very small batches or something, so I decided to get both.  Plus, the differences would add to the uniqueness of this concoction, right?

Boiling the brown sugar, corn sugar, and cinnamon

Basic sugars will add alcohol and potentially make it a drier cider, so I decided to make up my own rules.  This is what was done.

1. Boil the following for ten minutes in one pint of water.  1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup corn sugar, 1/4tsp of cinnamon.  This is a super secret recipe for success in any cider (I just made that up, but it sounds solid to me).

2. Cool and add to the carboy with the 5.5 quarts of cider.  I had 1 gallon plus the 1.6 quarts of cider in the glass jug.  I sampled a little of each, so I'm rounding to 5.5 quarts.  You could easily just do 1.5 gallons or 2 gallons for that matter. It is your cider.

3. I had some Wyeast 1056 in the refrigerator, left over from my yeast washing, so I decanted it, swirled the yeast to make a slurry.  I poured half of the slurry into the cider and the other I made into a new starter.

3 gallon glass carboy with cider

I just bought the 3 gallon glass carboy, and this will work perfect for the cider.  I'll let you know in a few weeks how it turns out.  Original Gravity was at 1.052.