Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
A bit of a bump. I have a bumper crop of crab apples and was thinking of making a cider. I mashed some and pressed the juice from the apples and it is pretty delicious on its own (I didn't even add any sugar), I am wondering what kind of equipment I would need to start turning this into some cider. A couple of other questions - do I need to pasteurize the juice? Also if I can't get around to making cider now - can I freeze the juice until I am ready or will that have an affect on the finished product?
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You need a bucket, literally, and some champagne yeast (danstar works). You can also use a carboy as a secondary if you like, but I stopped secondarying anything because its just not necessary. You can sterilize the fruit, and you should just for the prevention of off bacteria fermentation, you can find any number of ways to do this, usually campden tabs or such is what people will do. Yes you can freeze the juice as well to use at a later time.
When I did it with crabapples, I did add a bit of sugar to kick the alcohol content up a bit. If your cider ends up too dry, you can always backsweeten it with no issues.