What are the best apples, or blend of apples, commonly available in
the US, for making hard cider? I've got my own juicer, so I can make
any blend of juice I need.

Thanks,

--arne

Basically any non-grainy apple (no red or golden delicious) will work.
Exact blends are often jealously guarded by their makers.

You want a good mix of acidity and sugar....depending on how you want
to drink the final product will determine what you use for apples as
well. For a sweet cider you will want to use more acidic apples.....or
if you want ot let it go through a malolactic fermentation you can use
the mopre acidic apples as well.

Sorry I could not give you specific examples.....I usually just get
cider and cheat at the sugar and acidity by using additions.

Think apples like winesap, york & granny smith.
Steve
"arne thormodsen" > wrote in message
...
> What are the best apples, or blend of apples, commonly available in the
> US, for making hard cider? I've got my own juicer, so I can make any
> blend of juice I need.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --arne
>

arne thormodsen wrote:
> What are the best apples, or blend of apples, commonly available in
> the US, for making hard cider? I've got my own juicer, so I can make
> any blend of juice I need.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --arne
>
>

Try http://mtvernon.wsu.edu/frt_hort/ciderapples.htm

Actually, I googled for apple varieties for (regular) cider, expecting
to get nurseries, but ended up with the first link being exactly what
you were asking for. 0-o

Woods

"Woodswun" > wrote in message
...
> arne thormodsen wrote:
>> What are the best apples, or blend of apples, commonly available in
>> the US, for making hard cider? I've got my own juicer, so I can
>> make any blend of juice I need.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> --arne
>
> Try http://mtvernon.wsu.edu/frt_hort/ciderapples.htm
>
> Actually, I googled for apple varieties for (regular) cider,
> expecting to get nurseries, but ended up with the first link being
> exactly what you were asking for. 0-o
>

Thanks, tho' this confirms my suspicion that most apples you can buy
in stores aren't very good for making hard cider.

I was originally planning to use the wild "volunteer" apples that grow
all over where I live (Corvallis, OR), but for some reason the crop
was very poor this year. Last year it was great, I picked 20 lbs in
about 1/2 hour in one field.

--arne

> Woods

"arne thormodsen" > wrote in message
...
> What are the best apples, or blend of apples, commonly available in
> the US, for making hard cider? I've got my own juicer, so I can
> make any blend of juice I need.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --arne
>

Just a followup. I decided to use 1/2 Granny Smith and 1/2 Tydman.
The latter variety I'd never heard of, but the guy in the produce
section recommended it as a not-to-sweet apple good for cooking.

I bought 10 Lbs of each and ran them through a Champion Juicer. I
also bought an apple core-and-section tool, without which the job
would have been darn near impossible. The yield was about 1 1/4
gallons of juice. The gravity was about 1.05 (I'm a beer maker, one
of you wine guys will have to translate this to Brix... ;-). This was
a bit shy of what I wanted so I added about 6 oz. of table sugar to
bring the gravity to 1.06. Pitched Cote de Blancs and let it go.

Racked it last night after 5 days. Even at this point it's easily the
best cider I've ever made. Maybe not the best I've tasted, but
certainly the best I've made and one I'd be happy to serve to guests
(unlike some of my other experiments).

I'm going to let it sit in secondary until it clears and see how it
finally ends up. So far so good. Thanks for the help from this
group.

--arne

arne thormodsen wrote:
> "arne thormodsen" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>What are the best apples, or blend of apples, commonly available in
>>the US, for making hard cider? I've got my own juicer, so I can
>>make any blend of juice I need.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>--arne
>>
>
>
> Just a followup. I decided to use 1/2 Granny Smith and 1/2 Tydman.
> The latter variety I'd never heard of, but the guy in the produce
> section recommended it as a not-to-sweet apple good for cooking.
>
Winesap, cox pippins and russets are other good choices If you have a
friend with crab apple or can get wild crabs adding 1 pound of these to
your mix really improve the cider.