I’m thinking of brewing a batch of hard cider. A friend told me that a good recipe is the following:
-fresh (unpasteurized cider)
-i cup honey/gallon cider
-1/4 cup raisins per gallon cider
-wine yeast(cjampaign yeast)
Directions: heat mixture to just below boiling; maintain for min. 5 minutes. Pour mixture into clean (disinfected carboy); cover. Pitch yeast when mixture reeaches room temp… Close carboy, ferment until gas production drops to 1 bubble/minute. Bottle; age 2-4 weeks; enjoy!
Gee, I thought it was just leaving a container of fresh cider on top of the refrigerator for a week or so. 
I never knew there was a recipe.
I’d amend your directions as follows:
Directions: heat mixture to just below boiling (170 degrees if you have a cooking thermometer; add raisins; maintain for min. 5 minutes. Cover with a lid that fits well. Mark pot with message saying DO NOT OPEN. Wait until it is no longer warm to the touch; if you want, you can immerse it in the sink with enough ice water to almost make the pot float. Pour mixture into clean (disinfected carboy); cover. Pitch yeast when mixture reeaches room temp. Close carboy, ferment until gas production drops to 1 bubble/minute. Bottle; age 2-4 weeks; enjoy!
You really want to kill the native yeasts on the raisins unless you’re interested in food experiments with unpredictable results. e Coli is not your friend.
It looks like a good, controlled recipe (as much as you can ever control fermentation - my last batch of mulberry mead, Oy! What a headache!)
I’ve never gotten too serious about hard cider - I love it, but it’s so easy to make by folk method. I just upcap unpasteurized cider, squeeze in a bunch of honey and drop in a few raisins. I place a piece of gauze secured with a rubberband over the opening to prevent critters and leaves from getting in. Then I leave it on our back porch, where it’s cool. Three or four days later, I have hard cider.
I’m wondering about the near-boiling of your unpastuerized cider. Aren’t you basically pasteurizing it? (I’m not sure of the official “pasteurization” temperature). I suppose that’s why you have to add yeast - the naturally occuring yeast would be killed by the near-boiling. I don’t add yeast to mine because I don’t heat it.
:smack: :smack: :smack:
DON’T BOIL THE CIDER! You’re not trying to make jelly. Instead:
Buy pasteurized, preservative-free apple juice/cider.
For each galllon of cider you buy:
[ol]
[li]Boil 1 pint of water.[/li][li]Add a pound of honey (that’s a honey bear’s worth). [/li][li]Turn the heat down low.[/li][li]Add the raisins.[/li][li]Maintain at about 170 degrees for fifteen minutes.[/li][li]Turn the heat off, cover. Wait for it to cool off for an hour or two.[/li][li]Add the cider to the carboy.[/li][li]Add honey-water mix to carboy.[/li][li]If the carboy’s not warm to the touch, pitch your yeast. If it is too warm, affix fermentation lock and wait an hour or two.[/li][/ol]