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...
As others have said – there's nothing more needed than apples and the yeast, but both myself and the yeast like malted grain (probably for different reasons though :D ) so what I've done is used up some leftovers and made a small amount of beer wort to go with the ferment. Beer wort is loaded with all the nutrients yeast need to thrive, so it aids the ferment. One could use some yeast nutrient product as well, but this keeps it free of 'additives'.
The syrup and sugar are really trace amounts in 23 liters, I add them to make the starter go brr. It's just become a habit to have the syrup in there and I can't leave it out now. Goes in all of my beer runs too :)
Enjoy!