How to “brew” Apfelwein
So, How to make apple wine. Well, here’s where you start – 5 Gallons of apple juice from concentrate with no additives with the exception of Vitamin C, also known as Ascorbic Acid, 2lbs of dextrose, 2 packets of yeast, and a 6 gallon jug (PET better bottle), and an airlock:
The stuff legends are made of!
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First thing you need to do before beginning to brew alcohol is.. well.. drink some! You could not, but then you’d be a party pooper. Celebrate the making of booze by either drinking your own booze, or picking up some favorite craft brews (broooze… booze.. roads.. rho ads… I digress!).
To start I had a Leinenkugel’s Fireside Nut Brown Ale. This stuff is AWESOME. The aftertaste is like eating cocoa puffs! Prost!
Anyhow, once you’ve gathered your senses (had a couple sips) it’s time to do some short preparations. Making hard apple cider takes but 20 minutes tops including cleanup if you’re not messing around like me. In this particular case I also cleaned a freshly emptied keg at the same time. It’s easier to do it this way because:
By cleaning the carboy and emptying it into the dirty keg and then sanitizing the carboy and emptying that into the dirty keg – you effectively sanitize 2 for the price of 1 – Yay for being economical! Prost! The cleaner itself can be reused if you want to hang on to it, but the sanitizer tends to be a one use type deal. One of these days I may go more expensive (No rinse StarSan for example) where I can hang on to it for longer, but I’m happy with my process for now. Prost!
So, to prepare for this you need equipment and supplies:
I get the 6 gallon carboy to leave headroom… Headroom is a good idea. Don’t listen to people who say not to worry about headroom! krausen (the foam generated during fermentation) is a very mysterious force. If it overflows you will regret it – permanently. Your total initial investment is going to likely be around $70, however, you will only spend $25-$30 a 5 gallon batch of cider afterwards so it pays for itself in 2-3 batches and it’s so easy it should be outlawed. No, wait, celebrated! Prost!
- Clean out the carboy with cleaner. Powdered Brewery Wash works great although the first time with a new carboy you could just rinse it out and then make sure to sanitize it with 5TBSP of One Step to 5 gallons warm-hot water, let it sit for 5-10 minutes. After cleaning with PBW, rinse thoroughly with cold water – maybe a couple times – It’s good to make sure there’s no foam and the water is crystal. This is what PBW looks like in action:
PBW is there, just that these parts are now squeaky clean! It's very important to ensure you rinse thoroughly before sanitizing. Prost!
To multi-task I make about a quart more cleaner and a quart more sanitizer than I really need so I can fill a small container with the keg lid and airlock parts to clean/sanitize them at the same time.
How dirty does a keg get after storing homebrew? In the case of stout – pretty dirty. I tend to take some hot water and slosh it around to loosen up the muck as best I can.. then dump the cleaner from the carboy into the Keg and let it sit while I take care of the carboy with sanitizer. Still Prosting? Prost!
Here's the PBW from the carboy to the keg - see the foam? It's still kickin'
So we’ve transferred 5 gallons of cleaner from the carboy to the keg and made 5 gallons of sanitizer. We have about 15 minutes to do something… Why not try another beer? Surely by now you’ve withered your dreary bottle of its liquid treasures from the Prosts? My next beer was a Bridgeport Stout – Prost!
This particular stout is nice and even. It’s well balanced and flavorful, although it’s not quite as addicting as those freaking Fireside nut brown ales. Man.. It’s seriously like eating cocoa puffs!
After the carboy and keg have sat 10-15 minutes it’s time to rinse the Keg. Dump out the PBW mix and flush with water thoroughly. You don’t want to ingest PBW – that’s bad. Then pour the sanitizer from the carboy into the keg. In order to sanitize the funnel that I use to pour in the ingrediants for the apple stuff I pour the sanitizer through the funnel into the keg – when the keg is full it’ll sanitize the outside of the funnel – at least the important parts. I leave the carboy for a couple minutes to get excess sanitizer out. It’s perfectly safe, but I’d like to think the less the better. Prost!
You remembered to make extra, yes? Pour the remainder into the bowl with the keg parts and airlock so it can be sanitized (After rinsing, of course!). After the keg lid soaks for a couple minutes you can put the lid on the keg and put some CO2 in it. This pressure is used to fill the dip tube with the sanitizer. I take my thumb and push the poppit down until a little sanitizer squirts out.
Push the poppit in to get sanitizer in the tube.
Prost! Now the keg can sit while you mess with the apple stuff.
Ready to actually make the prison hooch? Take 1 gallon jug of apple juice and pour roughly half into the sanitized carboy. Repeat with another jug. Now pour 2.4 cups (2.5 won’t kill you) of dextrose into each jug. This means you have 1 pound of dextrose in each half gallon jug of apple juice. What you must do next is not for the wary: Shake, as violently as you can, without hurting anyone. Oh yeah, don’t forget to put the lids back on the jugs before shaking – you didn’t really need me to tell you that did you? Prost!
Get this stuff as dissolved as possible!
You want to dissolve the sugar as best as you can. From this point forward you also want to ensure that anything coming near your carboy, or apple juice is clean and sanitized. Don’t sip the juice, stick your finger in it, or spit, sneeze, cough, or otherwise allow foreign matter to get into the stuff. Unless you are trying for the prestigious “Worst Tasting Shit, Ever” award, these are all bad things. Prost!
Once you have your 2 half gallons of mixed apple juice, pour 1 gallon of apple juice into the carboy. Followed by 1 jug of the mixed apple juice, followed by 1 gallon apple juice, 1 mixed jug of apple juice and… WAIT! The last jug is special. Pour half the jug into the carboy. Now cut the yeast packets open and pour very carefully through the funnel into the carboy allowing as little to stick to the sides as possible (but don’t worry about it if it does! Prost!) then rinse the funnel with the apple juice to get the remaining yeast that stuck into the carboy. Then take the airlock and cap the carboy, fill the airlock halfway with vodka. You could use water, but Viaka is cheap and ultra sanitary – besides if in the end some squirts into the jug, you boosted the ABV without hurting anything. Here’s what you should have on the floor in front of you:
Put this 5 gallon jug of badboy in a safe, cool place and keep light out as much as possible. If you’re feeling crafty, take the cardboard box your carboy came in, tape the cardboard flaps on the box so that it makes the box one large rectangular prism with a square hole on one side. Slide it over the top of the carboy and cut a slit in the top to vent CO2 and viola! You’ve got a blackbox for your carboy! Prost!
Congratulations, in 4-5 weeks it will finish fermenting and be ready to consume. Hang on to the plastic gallon jugs if you’d like. Wash them out really well. You can transfer the apple cider back into them when it’s ready.
The hardest part will be waiting. Prost!
Oh yeah – if you’re sanitizing the keg still – empty it out and run some CO2 through the empty keg to clean out the lines and remove all oxygen. The keg is now 100% ready to receive liquid wisdom whenever it’s needed.
PROST!