Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I've got my first cider clarifying right now, and I used the Montrachet yeast just like Jon.

To the experienced cider makers, what is the yeast of choice?

I know that is a wide open question, but I've seen lots of dry beer yeasts (US-05, US-04, etc.) being used, and I know there are White Labs and Wyeast strains out there specially made for cider.

If you were just making one batch a year, what would you use?

Jamey,

Can you do the Bret bacteria thing, like you do for a Lambic?  That might be good.

I'm sure you can, but cider is a different animal that beer.  No hops, different percentages of sugars (maltose, sucrose, etc.) and lots of other variables.  I'm way out of my league on this.

If you want the king of ciders, talk to Kevin.

His post on HBT seems like chapter and verse on cider: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/results-juice-yeast-sugar-experiments-83060/

I also used Montrechet in mine, Jamey, but this is really my first batch of cider.  I would be curious to see how Red Star's Pasteur Red would do.  I have used that yeast in one of my melomels and it added this great complex berry flavor that was not in the one I did the year before, which had champagne yeast.

If you have not listened to the Shae Comfort show on the Brewing Network's Sunday Session, it is fantastic (http://thebrewingnetwork.com/shows/The-Sunday-Session/The-Sunday-Session-11-23-08-Shea-Comfort).  He talks all about using wine yeast in brewing beer and a lot of what he talks about in terms of flavors you can get out of the different wine yeasts may work with ciders too.  Definately worth the listen, probably one of the most valuable Sunday Sessions I have listened to.

I used some of that $1 dry ale yeast on my first and only batch of cider.  I would NOT use that.

Basically, one of my friends showed up one night and said "I've had these 4 gallons of cider sitting in my fridge for a while. Can you ferment them?"  I stupidly agreed, and after rejecting the ones that smelled sour and pulling the batch up to 5 gallons with a variety of ciders from Whole Foods and that place on the mountain who's name I can't remember (Carter?), I pasteurized the whole lot, cooled it and pitched.

The result was... boring, but very drinkable and quite alcoholic, but not in an obvious way (one of those "why am I buzzed after 2?" types of brews.)  There are probably about 1000 things I did wrong, but the first two things I would improve would be the yeast (first) and the blend of sour flavored apples to 'edible' apples (second).  The odd bit was that it improved in flavor somewhat (got more interesting) after about a year in bottles.