Paleo alcohol?
 

Equipment:
5 gallon glass carboy
Funnel
Airlock
Bottling Bucket
Siphon w/ tube
59 bottles + caps
Bottle capper

Ingredients:
5.5 gallons pasteurized apple juice (no preservative additives)
1 packet dry yeast (I use Nottingham Ale yeast, you can try champagne yeast)

1. Sanitize carboy, funnel, and airlock. (Soak in 1 tbsp of bleach per gallon of water, followed by a rinsing with clean water.)
2. Dump yeast through funnel into carboy.
3. Pour in 5 gallons of juice.
4. Cap with airlock (I fill mine half full with vodka).
5. Wait 3 weeks.
6. Sanitize bucket, siphon & tube, bottles & caps. (I like to run my bottles through the dishwasher to sanitize.) Rinse bleached stuff after.
7. Pour last 1/2 gallon of juice into bucket.
8. Siphon 5 gallons from carboy into bucket.
9. Bottle and cap.
10. Wait two to three weeks.
11. Enjoy your sparkling, hard apple cider.

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Seriously, I enjoy a good batch of homebrew beer as much as the next guy, but you have to respect a batch that avoids gluten and is ridiculously easy to make (damn cheap too!)

You have hard apple juice. Stick to cider at the beginning, then you have hard apple cider. Gives more for the yeast to feed on, and the more the yeast feed, the more the alcohol content. Filter it when its done to get ride of the sludge.

I'm a homemade winemaker myself, but I just use a butter churn and use grapes/blueberries and dried apricots. Pretty redneck, but it tastes better than anything I could have ever had in Napa Valley.

I make hard cider every once in a while. But my method is a bit simpler, and requires less washing of various stuff.

I take a gallon of apple juice. I dump in a small amount of champagne yeast. I leave the lid loose, and sit it on the kitchen floor for 5-6 days. Then I put it in the fridge and tighten the lid. Next day I drink it. Its carbonated from the yeast continuing to work for a while in the fridge with the lid tightened, subjectively id say it has about the same alchohol content as beer, tastes really good, etc.

Been making it like this for years, ever since Rippetoe and I were drinking a hard cider at a local bar (which closed down a while back) and I commented that the stuff was really great but at $4 a glass I wasnt going to be drinking it often, and he said, "well why in the hell dont you just make it yourself?". Which led to him giving me a little packet of champagne yeast from his stash, and directions, and I was off to the races.

Id estimate that home-made, it costs about 50 cents a glass, tasts about the same, and since I usually pair alchohol consumption with reading, being able to drink it at home makes that much easier than drinking it at a bar.

glenn

Nice. I will have to try that this weekend.

A brewing supplies store should have it.

http://www.txhomebrew.com/

...bringing back an older post...

Glen, you say you 'tighten the lid and put it in the fridge and the new day it's good for drinking'...


Does anybody know for how long will it hold for in the fridge?...If I don't drink a gallon of cider in one evening?


Thanks.

If you don't make any assurances that things are sanitized, I wouldn't let it go for too long.

Thanks! I will have to try that this one.

What kind of apple juice do you use?

Is it the nice, thick, tasty, opaque type OR is it just any type of 'regular' clear apple juice?

Supposedly works with any kind of juice, filtered or not. I have only done it with store-bought, pasteurized apple juice. Be sure no preservative has been added.

I would like to do it with some of the pulpy, unfiltered stuff, but I have not yet done so. I've read that you need to give it a bit longer to ferment but that it has a bit more character. I would also like to get a fruit press and make some myself.