Episode 51 - Making Cider with Jon Schlee

This week I spoke with Jon Schlee about his experience with making great apple ciders. We talk bout cider from beginner the entire world of different types of ciders.

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Show Transcript

AI created it will have many errors.

Introduction

On today’s show, we’re going to talk about making cider.
We have John Schley on the show, and he is an avid maker of great ciders. And we’re going to talk about all the great ways that you can go from being a beginner to making a wide variety
of different types of ciders.

So stick around, while we talk about making cider. Also, welcome back to home brewing DIY the podcast that takes on the do it yourself, aspect of homebrewing, gadgets, contraptions, and parts. This show covers it all.

Today we’re talking to John Schley, and we’re going to have him on the show. Here, we will talk about how at this time of year you can make a cider easily at home.

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Well, I am just planning on getting a brew going. I had quite the conversation with a bunch of guys in my discord this week. And, I think we ended up talking about making a Boba Tea Beer, some sort of pastry stout with Boba Tea. I don’t know if that’s really going to happen, but it would be a real fun beer. So, if anybody’s ever made a Boba beer, I’d like to hear about what your experience was like with baking that type of beer. It
ended up becoming quite the rabbit’s hole. We all ran down.

One of the cool things you can do is head over to our discord server. If you go to homebrewingDIY.beer, hit the join, the discussion tab and hop on the server. It’s always a great time and we have some really great conversations. So please join and talk to us today.

Making Cider with Jon Schlee

Well, let’s jump into this week’s episode. So we’re going to talk to John Schlee about making cider.

Colter Wilson: Welcome John Schley to Homebrewing DIY. Hi, John. How are you?

Jon Schlee: Doing well. How are you doing Colder?

Colter Wilson: Excellent! Thanks for agreeing to come on the show. I’m excited to have

you. I want to start off is let’s talk a bit about your history as a homebrewer how’d

you start out.

Jon Schlee: I actually got my start insiders about seven years ago. It was just kind of looking for fun, a gift idea. My parents said, “What would you want for Christmas?” They always like to give me things I can make. I found a cider making kit actually on Amazon, brew lemon and cider making kit, it was with a concentrate.

I got that kit made my first batch. From there I was hooked. I realized how easy it was and that really. Transformed into from making from kits and then going and buying orchard cider and then it turned into extract brewing and then all grain brewing and I met dabble in wine. It was definitely the gateway drug to brewing, I think was just that simple cider kit.

Colter Wilson: It’s the gateway to all of your fermented products, right?

Jon Schlee: It is. All my friends and family’s delight.

Colter Wilson: You sound like BS; you start off somewhere. And next thing, you have a glut of beer and all alcoholic beverage beverages floating around.

Jon Schlee: It’s my seller is a little ridiculous right now. Especially in coven, no one do enjoy it with it stacking up.

Colter Wilson: It’s so sad. I kind of feel the same way right now. I have some space in my kegerator and I still cause that means I get to brew because I was so backed up and I didn’t have any keg space left.

Jon Schlee: That’s a good problem to have though.

Colter Wilson: That is a good problem to have. Look, we brought you on the show to talk about cider making good decider season. Right now, it’s the middle of August. I would say we’re pretty much prime time across all of North America right now for apples. And if there’s a better time to make cider, I would say at least for the next 30 to 60 days is probably prime time. Would you agree with that?

Jon Schlee: Absolutely. What’s interesting too, with the orchards. You’re really based upon where you’re at, I find even later in the season, some of the more cider specific apples tend to come into to harvest. Typically, earlier in the season, you get a lot more of the sweeter varieties. They don’t have as much of the tannins and the assets like the more cider specific. Apples do. I like to make my trips, my local orchards here, usually the end of September, mid-October. That’s why I really find the best time to buy it. Some good blends of fresh-pressed orchard juice.

For the Beginner

Colter Wilson: That’s awesome! Well, let’s talk about beginner, right? I think that’s always a good place to start. Let’s say I’m a home brewer or I’m an aspiring. Homebrewer and I’m listening to this show and I’ve never even thought about making a cider. And maybe that could be the thing I start with. If you were to recommend to me the best way to start with making a cider, let’s start with what equipment do I need? What do I need to make a cider and what would be probably the most approachable way for a beginner to make a cider?

Jon Schlee: That was a great question. I’d say first and foremost, you just need some basic equipment. What I’ll typically recommend is just as a single fermenter, you usually want something like a six gallon or so fermenter we always like to do, if I do five-gallon batches, I just think that’s easy.

DZ, I keg a lot, obviously you can keg or bottle, for a five-gallon batch, you need a fermenter. You’re going to need a carboy for secondary. For your secondary fermentation, once you’re done with your primary fermentation will racket to me carboy. And then that’s where I’ll either let it sit in age a little while, or oftentimes I’ll add other adjuncts like fruits or our honeys are mixed, spices and whatnot.

Then a couple of just basic ingredients that you can get from your home store. Like some, I typically use wine yeast or champagne yeast. I think that gives a really nice clean profile. Some simple yeast will work like a USAA five ale yeast, as well as some yeast, nutrient. And peptic enzyme, the peptic enzyme is actually what breaks down the pectins in the cider. It was oil help clarify that cider. Because at the end of the day you want, to have kind of a clear product with cider. That’s what people expect when you buy one. It’s really easy to accomplish that if you just have those few simple ingredients. Then really when it comes to sourcing my juice.

I feel like there is a couple of trains of thought, you got the cider purists that say, you got to have an orchard, fresh juice. You need to have a good structure and your juice, good tannins, and what not to, to make a quality cider. But I really have to disagree because I’ve made some wonderful ciders. I just literally go into my grocery store and buying treetops. I like to get the PR, you always need to have preservative-free, you’re getting something like the fresh-pressed tree, top juices. Something is not from concentrate. Even the, not from concentrate juice from Costco works.

Fantastic and you simply just pour five gallons into that. Fermenter add your peptic enzyme yeast nutrient. Then pitch your yeast and within about three weeks or so your cider has done fermenting put into secondary for another couple of weeks and you’re ready to bottle. It’s a really simple process and I think people tend to overcomplicate things, especially when you’re thinking, coming from beer, you think everything’s complicated making beer, right?

Colter Wilson: Beer is always that hard to make kind of beverage right. You think about it. It’s like you have to, especially if you go into whole all-grain brewing, not that it’s unapproachable. It’s, wonderful. But the idea is that you have to match, you have to then go through all the, depending on the style, you could be step mashing, all kinds of stuff. Then the idea would be, then you have to boil and add hops and then you’ve just made the fermentable beverage. There’s like the whole converting starches to sugar thing. Whereas with Apple juice, your kind of already has the sugar bill 10 there’s really no conversion that needs to happen. You’re really just fermenting. Right?

Jon Schlee: Absolutely! I can get a batch of cider, from all of my equipment sitting there on my countertop to the inner fermenter and tucked away into my fermentation closet. I can get that done in about 20 to 30 minutes. It’s really easy and it’s quite dangerous, to be honest. You look at that to make a 7% beer using a lot of grain or a lot of extracts, for 7% side, or that’s just, what’s naturally going to come out of the, just the sugars that are already contained in the juice.

Do apples have certain varieties when it comes to sugar concentrations?

Colter Wilson: And let’s talk about that. For example, do you find that certain varieties of apples have higher sugar concentrations than others? Is that something insider or is it generally all the same?

Jon Schlee: Definitely! What’s interesting is it’s all really based upon apple variety. So, for instance, last fall, I went up to an orchard here in Logan, Utah, and I’m actually just looking at some of my recipe notes right now. My starting gravity was anywhere from 1.04, six to 1.05 to, and this was from two different orchards, two different pressings.

The different types of apples will definitely, some can have more sugar than others, but interestingly enough, crab apples have a ton of sugar in them. And that’s actually kind of one of my little secrets that I think I could share here is says maybe it’s not really a secret, but it’s really easy to make it kind of a simpler site or even something like store-bought juice that you use and make it into a really tasty product.

I’ll actually go pick crab apples from my neighborhood trees. Obviously, there’s my neighbor’s permission, but we’ll go and I’ll pick, a couple of pounds of crab apples, and I throw them through my, my juicer. And then I’ll ferment that separately. I usually do it get about a gallon and then I’ll actually take it. And I’ll blend that back into my finished fermented cider. And it adds a lot of really nice tannins and body. I’m tasting one right now. I’m quite impressed by taking it from a kind of a flabby basic cider and something that really, you feel like you could go buy it at a liquor store.

Complexity of Cider

Colter Wilson: Let’s talk a bit about the complexity of cider. When I think of ciders that I’ve made and I’m going to be very clear. I’m the type of person that likes dry beverages, right? When I make meat, I make dry meat. If I make a cider, I tend to like my ciders to be very dry and crisp. What I personally am looking for.

I don’t back sweeten and I don’t do all of the things that you might see. I actually tend to not add. Other ingredients into them. What, what would you say are different ways to change it? For example, I want to be clear, and this is something to kind of note you, you

talked about some gravity’s and they’re pretty low.You talked about like a 10 46 and a 10 52 from your last couple of batches. But when you do cider, they dry completely out, unlike beer.

Jon Schlee: That’s correct! Since there’s no complex sugars in an apple juice, it, all of the sugars are available for the yeast to ferment. You’re bringing it down to completely dry 1.0. What I find this interesting, and I personally Iike my ciders drive. I don’t like something that’s super sweet.

I feel like its sweetness that adds a whole other set of challenges too, your yeast is going to want to chew through whatever sugar you put in there. You got to pasteurize things yet to be able to retain sweetness. What I do typically do when I want to make something, give it a little bit more of a perceived sweetness.

I may look at change and get my yeast a little bit. So, your champagne yeast, like your ISI is one eight, that’s going to bring it really, really dry. Whereas if you use something like that actually leaves sweetness in the final product, interestingly enough, so much.

I actually prefer how sweet the USO five made my cider. But there’s other ways to, to add the perception of sweetness to your ciders without necessarily adding sugar. I know you said you like your cider is pretty plain. You don’t like to add those adjuncts, but for me, I, I really like experiments with different flavor profiles. I’ve done things like a strawberry and hibiscus that actually added a decent amount of sweetness to it.

I made it a viscous tea that I just boiled with a couple of cups of water and then some strawberry puree. Usually, it’ll add about three pounds of a puree, a pasteurized puree to my final fermented cider. And then I’ll let that sit for about another month until it clears. And then I can take any re the rack that to a kegger or bottle it at that time. Some other really interesting ways that I’ve flavored.

My ciders were actually for instance, right now I’ve got a white

peach puree. And then I also use some Amarillo hops. I know they’re really starting to kind of get a foothold here in the market. And what’s interesting with hops, with beers, they can impart so many different flavors, especially when it’s dry hopped. What I actually just recently did is I, I had taken a five-gallon batch of side of that was fermenting.

I had retained a half gallon of that pre fermentation. I heated that up to about 180 degrees. And then through an announcer, those Amarillo hops. And that really added some nice stone fruit flavors. It’s going to compliment that white peach puree on there. It actually, has a lot more perceived sweetness than you think, even though it is still completely dry.

Colter Wilson: Amarillo is such a juicy hop already. Right? You’re bringing it up to one 80. You’re still getting some ice, I always say. I was crushed this word, but it’s I as memorization. You do get a bit of that perceived bitterness and the fruitiness from the hops, but you’re also not boiling for him out for an hour. You’re not getting a whole bunch of bitterness. That’s like that really strong kind of IPA bitterness, right?

Jon Schlee: Exactly! You never really want it. You don’t want to boil Apple juice because that will actually set the pectin in the juice and then you will never be able to have a clear product. So that was actually a new experiment to me. I I’ve just done something simple as just throwing some dry hops in the sanitized.

In a sanitize Muslim bag and just pop that in my car boy for a week or so, will really impart some nice flavors, even just with an ounce of hops. It can get quite intense. There’s definitely you want to use some restraint when you’re putting hops or really any other spices for that matter in your cider.

The Spices

Colter Wilson: Let’s talk a bit about spices. I think that spices are one of those things that people, even with beer tend to kind of forget that they’re out there. Right. I think that spices are something that can impart a very, very dramatic effect when it comes to adding some depth and character to a beverage that some people might perceive as pretty one dimensional.

What kind of spices do you like to use and what kind of flavors do you get from those? Maybe even also talk about what the process is to add spices. Like you just said a little bit goes a long way.

Jon Schlee: It does! You know something that I did this last fall that, that turned out to be really tasty was I actually fermented my cider added some passion fruit puree, and then I added vanilla beans. I ended about two and a half full vanilla Madagascar, vanilla beans, about four-inch-long beans into a hop sock basically. And let that sit in there for about a week. And that actually imparted a significant amount of vanilla flavor.

It took a while to even metal it down once I had bottled it, but it’s just to go

what I was saying a little goes a long way, but I recently completed a cider. That was very interesting. Where I use some bourbon barrel aged maple syrup. That I put in my fermented cider. I let that ferment down again for about another month. And then I added cinnamon sticks. So, I added a one cinnamon stick. I added a couple of cloves and I also added some vanilla beans and it really turned out quite interesting.

I think what’s important when you’re using spices is that you really need to sample every few days because just in, just in a couple of days, it can really impart a very distinct flavor. When I was adding those spices to that last batch, that maple syrup, bourbon barrel aged, I tasted it every other day.

And after about five days, I had to pull everything out because it was really imparting a pretty intense flavor. And I’ve sent, I bottled that a couple of months ago. I cracked a bottle recently and those spices are definitely prevalent there. I think you’d definitely want to use some risks.

Great! I always like to try to go for the freshest spice. You can get not something cheap that you do. I have a little bottle at the grocery store. Always try to. Try to splurge on some, some good spices or seasonings. And the same thing goes for the few fruit purees or just, whole fruit. I grow some golden raspberries in my backyard and did a golden raspberry cider.

Those are really wonderful as well, but I think, you need to make sure that maximizing the fruit extracts that you’re going to bring into the cider. And so, what I’ll typically do if I’m using whole fruit or fresh fruit is, I’ll freeze it in the freezer. Mash it a little bit, freeze it again, do that a couple of times it helps really down those cellular walls of the fruit to really maximize that, that flavor yield that you’re going to get.

Colter Wilson: And with fresh fruit, you’re basically adding that after fermentation. You’ll do like, for example, in secondary beef, are you doing it before clarifies or after? When are you actually adding that fruit?

Jon Schlee: Yeah. I always add the fruits in my secondary. If you and your fruits too early and add that in primary fermentation, just like beer. A lot of times that the fermentation activity is going to blow off a lot of those really delicate flavors and aromas that you’re going to get from the fruits. I’ll always rack my cider after it’s done fermenting to a secondary carboy and then add my fruits from there.

The Packaging

Colter Wilson: Excellent! Let’s talk a bit about packaging. You said he keg you bottle. Is there any different bottling process when it comes to cider versus beer?

Jon Schlee: No, not at all. What I’ve found, with ciders is that, I like a little bit more carbonation with them, and I personally prefer the type, the cot. What I’m talking about when you get that real fine bubble with a bottle conditioning versus forced carbonation with CO2.

Colter Wilson: Totally! It’s there. The mouth feel is completely different when you have a secondary fermentation in the bottle, right. It’s just got they’re smaller, they’re crisper. If you do a higher carbonation, it’s almost like that champagne kind ofcarbonation.

Jon Schlee: Exactly! That’s, what I do. When I’m bottling my ciders, I’ll typically carbonate them to about 3.2 to 3.7 volumes. When I’m going that high, I’m using some pretty thick bottles. What I’ll typically do, I’ll buy some thicker, no Belgian style, beer bottles, 12 ounce beer bottles, online from some of the big distributors.

I’ll also use champagne bottles a lot. That’s a good reason to buy champagne yet you can, I got to save the bottle. I actually have a lot of champagne bottles that I use as well. That benefit there too is, you don’t have to bottle so many bottles.

But also, the detriment is, you don’t have as many bottles to drink, so you got to pick and choose when you open those big ones. I enjoy the bottling aspect. It’s fun to give away. We all make this stuff for ourselves. It’s kind of like you cook, you’re a Baker, you like to bake. You’re not going to eat all the treats you make. It’s the same thing with brewing. I make it because I like to share it and having it in bottles, ready to go. Give them as gifts, bring them to parties or events and whatnot. I just think it’s a lot of fun. It’s a little bit more portable, but as we all know, bottling can definitely be a lot more work than just throwing it into a five-gallon keg and throwing it on some CO2 for carbonation.

Colter Wilson: Have you ever made like sizer or anything like that?

Jon Schlee: I’m just getting ready to bottle my first batch of sizer. I was actually really surprised about how well it turned out. Because it looks a little funky, when you throw, so I actually, I threw in my honey during primary, so I didn’t wait until secondary or anything for my honey.

I threw in about four pounds of some tea tree, honey, interestingly from Australia, I just found it at the store randomly and said, Oh, this sounds kind of interesting. I wanted to do a mint sizer.

Colter Wilson: Utah has the weirdest honeys don’t they it’s just.

Jon Schlee: Yeah, we definitely do. We’ve got all sorts of weird things here in Utah, but that’s a whole another conversation. I threw a couple of pounds of the honey; it took a long time to ferment down. When you’re adding honey to cider, you plan on letting that fermenting primary for at least two months. I let it sit in the secondary for another six months and it’s kind of had a little bit of a different flavor to it. I liked it, but I wasn’t sold on it. What I ended up doing is I added a fruit here’s the go. Here I go again with my fruit. I added some Blackberry puree because I love Blackberry.

Then I actually took some fresh spearmint for my garden and soaked it in some vodka and made a tincture and let that sit for about a week. And then I added that vodka tincture to it. It’s a spearmint Blackberry sizer, and it turned out absolutely fantastic. I’ll be sending you a few bottles after our podcast here, so you can see what I’m talking about.

Colter Wilson: You sent me that sizer and I’ll have you back on the show and we’ll do a tasting. We’ll just do that.

Jon Schlee: I’ll send a few different ones, but I got to tell you my favorite cider I’ve ever made. And maybe there’s a little bit of nostalgia here, but golden raspberries. They’re not something you can normally buy at the store. Have you ever seen a golden raspberry before?

Colter Wilson: Yes, I have.

Jon Schlee: Okay. They are so tasty. It’s kind of like a red raspberry, but a lot juicier. And when you let them get real ripe, they get kind of jammy. I have a big Bush in my backyard where I picked about four pounds of golden raspberries last year. That has one of the most amazing flavors. It’s got a lot of perceived sweetness, even though there’s no sugar in it left, it’s all fermented out. It’s got a little bit of tartness to it. I think a lot of those types, like the raspberries, the blackberries, um, those types of fruits really compliment cider as well.

Colter Wilson: I just want to clarify, since I realized that we didn’t say anything, a sizer is actually a beer. Sorry, not a beer. A sizer is actually a Mead mixed with cider. And so, it’s like a cider Mead combination and that’s how you make a sizer.

Jon Schlee: There you can go all sorts of ways. The site, the sizer, I think is really cool, but what I’m interested in to it, I’ve never made it before is graph. Which is cider mixed with malt sugar. What I was thinking, just add maybe a pound or two of some dry malt extracts, like there’s some wheat, dry malt extract or something like that out a little bit of body, some dry hops, maybe a little bit of some stone, some type of stone fruit puree.

I think I could come out really tasty. There’s really a lot of ways that you can make cider there’s no right or wrong way to do it. I just think it’s fun to just get out there and experiment, I’ve made probably 50 batches of cider, and I’ve never had one that I hated. I’ve had some, I didn’t like as much, I still drank them, but, but most everything I make comes out really, really well because if you follow the process, if you’re patient. I think a lot of people expect that, you think.

Well. I’m going to throw a balloon on an Apple juice bottle and throw it at the back of my closet. Like you and your people did when they were a kid. You see this and you see this online.

Colter Wilson: I see it all the time.

Jon Schlee: They want results quick. They don’t want have patients. If you have a little bit of patience, you have the right ingredients. And you’re used some sanitary conditions. I think you’re going to come out with a great beverage that you’re going to enjoy. And you’re going to want to share it with your friends and family.

Colter Wilson: Yeah! And just for those who are listening and I’m sure a lot of you go to Reddit, I think there’s actually a Reddit slash PR prison hooch and just don’t go there. It’s scary.

Jon Schlee: I literally just started following that because someone posted something in the cider feed on Reddit. I think I might have to remove it because it’s so ridiculous. People were fermenting Gatorade. I don’t even know how they do that, at least they had something that looked like Gatorade and Gatorade bottles.

Colter Wilson: I I’ll admit the closest I’ve been to something like that has made me Skeeter P but that, and even then it was still, I used like sugar in water to make it with lemon. And like, it was still ended up being quality compared to, you know, trying to ferment mountain Dew, which people do.

Jon Schlee: Where there’s a will. There’s a way,

Colter Wilson: There’s a little.

Jon Schlee: Yeah!

What’s bane in Cider

Colter Wilson: What we’re doing, we’re digressing. Let’s get back to good beverages. I want to kind of talk about with cider that I think we’ve talked about a lot is how you can really just experiment with this one beverage and kind of go anyway, with it. You can blend it with wine, you can blend it with beer, you can blend it with me. You can take all the other alcoholic beverages and the kind of all will go well with cider in some way.

Jon Schlee: They do and it’s funny, you said wine because I had a wine kit that I made, and it was a Cabernet salve wine kit. I had three pounds of this, grape skins in this big bag. From the fermenter. And I had a little bit left for in the primary. I couldn’t quite all fit in the secondary.

I actually put that into four gallons of cider and I didn’t taste it until last week. It had been in there for about six weeks and I, and I was downstairs with a friend and I told them what I had made. And he’s like, man, that sounds really weird. But I was like, well, let’s try it. I haven’t even tried it yet.

I pulled out a sample and it was really tasty. It had some really nice flavors to it. You can’t go wrong with blending and I think it’s not going to cut. If you make a mistake, it’s not like it’s a huge mistake. It didn’t take you a lot of time and it didn’t cost a lot of money.

Colter Wilson: Exactly! We talked about this a bit at the beginning, but if I were looking to make a cider, I’ve never made one before, what would you say is a great beginner cider recipe that you would share with somebody that you were trying to help today?

Jon’s advice for the beginners

Jon Schlee: It is a great question. I can just kind of go back here. And my recipe book for just a basic Stanford cider.

Colter Wilson: Hear pages turning that isn’t digital.

Jon Schlee: That? No, I’m kind of old school like that. I have a notebook for work too. I write everything down in notebook. Some that’s just the way that I roll, at one point I probably should digitally ties it, so per month, my old school, a spiral notebook here.

Just a standard based side or that I’ll make, uh, five gallons of Apple juice. Just from Costco, go get your Kroger, Apple juice. It’s not from concentrate. There are no preservatives in it. It’s a wonderful juice to use.

Colter Wilson: Preservative you’re always looking for.

Jon Schlee: You don’t want to have any type of potassium sorbate is typically what you’ll find in some storage uses. Most of them, you’re just looking for pasteurization. If it’s pasteurized is just, either by heat or by UV, it’s fine. You can ferment that, but if there’s potassium sorbate or potassium, petabyte by sulfate, that will definitely stall a fermentation. You need to make sure that there’s no preservatives in your juice.

Most juices out there don’t have preservatives in them anyways, but I will caution you, is that some orchards and there’s one even here in my town that does really nice, fresh?

However, they put sulfites in it. I won’t be able to ferment it, so I can’t buy juice from that orchard, unfortunately. You always want to find your own pasteurized juice if you’re going to an orchard, UV pasteurization is okay, UV pasteurized ISANS okay. But no preservatives like soar Bates or sulfites. Store-bought, you’re going to be fine. Just pouring it right out of the jug. You don’t need to worry about anything and that stuff.

Typically, I’ll do five gallons of Apple juice. I’ll do a teaspoon of a, for made K or for made ode, just a yeast neutral that you can find your home brew store. I use two teaspoons of hectic enzyme, which is, again, going to break down the pectin’s in those juice to make sure that you have a clear product at once. Fermentation’s completed.

Then sometimes depending upon how it is tasty, I’ll add some acid blend. You can also buy that at your home brew store. It’s a blend of different assets that adds a little bit more zip to a kind of a bland juice.

However, I find sometimes it’s not always necessary, especially if you’re adding other adjuncts, like fruits or spices, you don’t need to worry about the asset blend. Then here, I just did a USO five USO five. Then that actually started on five 27 on six, 10. It was a fermented. And then I let it sit in the secondary for three to four weeks with some passion fruit puree and kegged it. That was actually last fall. I think that batch actually went to my friend’s wedding. it was really simple and it literally costs. About $30 to make 57% ciders.

Colter Wilson: Nice! That’s half the price of making a new England IPA these days.

Jon Schlee: Yeah. Especially with us hop cost. If you go and signers are expensive, you go to a store, you want to pick up some nice cider, like a wood Chuck or some, just a higher end brand you’re looking at a couple bucks a bottle. This really is a way to make some delicious beverage for a really great price.

Colter Wilson: I will say that, but as with anything, this is a hobby and I want to give anybody who’s listening to this and thinking about it. This is a hobby and there are equipment costs you got to get in there. He’s probably got a fermentation bucket. Carboys things like that. And so, anybody and I like to warn everyone, anybody who is telling them significant other, “Hey, I want to brew beer because it’s going to be cheaper.” That is a bold-faced lie. You’re telling yourself a bold face lies.

In the end, we do it because we love the hobby. This is the point. Like you said earlier, it’s about making and sharing with friends and those are it. And that’s what makes COVID-19 so hard is that so many new people have gotten into homebrewing because of it. And none of us can share.

Jon Schlee: Just more for all of us to drink, I guess.

Closing

Colter Wilson: I want to thank you for coming on home brewing DIY. This was a really wonderful conversation to talk about ciders. And if I were to want to find out more about some of the ciders and beers that you’re making, where’s a good place for me as a listener to find you.

Jon Schlee: You can find me on Instagram. My page is called the sessions brewing. That’s what the Z O S E S S I O N Z sessions brewing. Then also my ciders, I just market that under seeds ciders. If I ever decide to go big one day, you’ll see seed ciders here. I’d love to be able to help out anybody. If you guys have any questions, comments, feedback, I’d love to be able to help or share however, I can.

Colter Wilson: You’re now on my discord server. Make sure, you hang out and if people have cider questions, I’ll send them your way.

Jon Schlee: That would be fantastic! I’d love to help. It’s a lot of fun. So hopefully more people will pick this up. It’s a great hobby and it’s easy to do.

Colter Wilson: Awesome! Like I said, John, thank you so much for coming on the show. And if you send me those ciders, we’ll have you back on the show and we’ll do a cider tasting. How’s that sound?

Jon Schlee: You’ll get a package in the mail. Just send me your address. And I’ll pack up a little gift pack for you.

Colter Wilson: Awesome! Thanks for coming on the show.

Jon Schlee: Take care.

Colter Wilson: I’d like to thank John for taking the time to come on this week’s show. As always, we learn something new on the show and there’s just an entire world of cider out there. So, thank you again, John.

If you head over to the show notes, I’ll have links. They’re linking to John’s Instagram account and other resources on cider. Head over to homebrewing DIY beer. You can follow us on social media, you can follow us at homebrewing DIY, all one word we’re on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Well, that’s it for this week and we’ll talk to you next week on Homebrewing DIY.

Episode 51 – Making Cider with Jon Schlee

Links:

Social

Music:

Show Transcript

Introduction

The Sponsors

Making Cider with Jon Schlee

For the Beginner

Do apples have certain varieties when it comes to sugar concentrations?

Complexity of Cider

The Spices

The Packaging

What’s bane in Cider

Jon’s advice for the beginners

Closing

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One thought on “Episode 51 – Making Cider with Jon Schlee”

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Episode 51 – Making Cider with Jon Schlee

Links:

Social

Music:

Show Transcript

Introduction

The Sponsors

Making Cider with Jon Schlee

For the Beginner

Do apples have certain varieties when it comes to sugar concentrations?

Complexity of Cider

The Spices

The Packaging

What’s bane in Cider

Jon’s advice for the beginners

Closing

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Like this:

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One thought on “Episode 51 – Making Cider with Jon Schlee”