This summer brought plenty of apples in our three kinds of apple trees. I had the luxury of tasting them all and deciding on the mix to have juiced.
And nailed it! Last time I used mostly the sweetest ones and the cider had very little apple taste in it. This one is very much apple tasting. Primary fermentation went on for over three weeks, and the result is bone dry, just like my type 1 diabetic ass likes it.
Also in the 23 l batch: 1 kg of malt (Simpsons Premium English Cara, Viking Cara Pale and Simpsons Maris Otter) to feed micronutrients to the yeast, 1 dl dark sugarcane syrup and 1 dl white sugar in the yeast starter. Yeast was fresh 'sahti' yeast, not really showing its banana character though.
Next time: more malt and taking the time to carefully boil down the volume of apple juice a bit. Hopefully next year, but one can never count on getting apples...
I make it with just apples and a small amount of sugar for bottle conditioning. It's fairly simple, I juice the apples and stick it in a carboy until the airlock stops bubbling.