I had come across a recipe for German Apfelwein a while back and am now finally getting around to trying it. It is a very simple recipe, no cooking or anything involved. Just mix the ingredients and then wait, the longer the better. According to the reviews I’ve seen, 6 months of aging is great, 8 or more and it is amazing. We will have to see.
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Process:
Poured 1 gallon of apple juice into my 5-gallon carboy. I then mixed 1 gallon of apple juice with 1 pound of brown sugar and shook well to mix, then added this to the carboy. I repeated this step again with the second pound of brown sugar. I then one more gallon of the juice. I opened the yeast packet and pitched the yeast, then used the last gallon of apple juice to wash any yeast off the inner sides of the carboy. I measured the acidity, which turned out to be 0.33% TA, perhaps a little low, but I decided not to adjust and just to follow the original recipe.
12-5-10: Put into primary carboy, OG measured at 1.064. Will leave in primary for about 3 months and then bottle.
12-6-10: Moved the carboy out of my brew room, which was around 50 degrees, and put it in my room which brought the temperature of the wine up to the mid 60s, a better temperature for the initial fermentation.
12-14-10: Moved the carboy back to the brew room.
6-9-11: Bottled into about 50 12-ounce bottles. Tried one and it was pretty tasty with a hard cider flavor. I will continue to age these in bottles while drinking some occasionally.