- Grocery Store Apple Juice - Hard Cider

Grocery Store Appple Juice - Hard Cider

Equipment used: Half gallon glass bouron bottle - cleaned and sterilized, bubbling air-lock, 2 litre plastic soda bottle

Ingredients: 1/2 gallon bottle of grocery store 100% apple juice (unsweetend), 1 cup sugar, 1/2 pacakge of Lalvin 1116 yeast.

Steps: 1. Sanitize all equipment in/with boiling water 2. Mix apple juice and sugar in your container. 3. Shake vigorously. 4. Hydrate your yeasties in a cup for 10 minutes (about 1/3 filled with warm water, + teaspoon of sugar.) 5. Mix in yeast/water from cup. 6. Shake vigorously again. 7. Fit airlock and wait 1-2 weeks or until bubbling slows considerably. 8. Taste it! It's pretty strong at this point and almost tastes like booze--sweet!! 9. Mix in 1/4 teaspoon of sugar for every twelve ounces of liquid (in this case it comes out to 1 teaspoon) 10. Transfer to 2 litre bottle, cap, and wait until the bottle gets hard!

Results: Tasted before bottling-very dry and promising. I put this into a two litre soda bottle to carbonate. After carbonated, it tasted great, almost like a dry Woodchuck Cider--not as sweet. However, I then foolishly tried to transfer it into single-serve bottles (8oz green glass ginger-ale bottles with screw-top, available at the grocery store.) As you can guess it lost its carbonation. I still drank them, refering to them as buzz bombs. Though flat and somewhat strong tasting, they packed a punch!

Suggestions: I didn't have the single-serve bottles when I started carbonation in the 2 litre bottle. I just bottled another batch of this last night, directly to sterilized single-serve bottles for carbonation. I'm hoping this will turn out better.

Notes: Cheap, easy, and potent. This is sure to be a favorite!