Hi all and thanks for all the information I have gathered off this site. Im currently two weeks into my first attempts at homebrew and just wanted to share my progress. 
Started with a Mangrove jacks apple cider kit as a practice run which is now in bottles carbing.
A friend of mine who is far more handy than me managed to build us a diy press and muncher rig out of spare parts we scrounged and via facbook we managed to get enough apples free for 100L for him and 43L for me. Our first ciders are now on.
Video of setup. A curtain has been added to muncher to stop that overflow flying out the back. He gets very excited by it as you can tell in video. I had to edit out most his "hoofin it" exclamations but at least I now have a batch name and image idea for the bottles. Hoofin it cider.
So the first batch of pressed is a week in and I'm just keeping it simple with lalvin ec1118 og 1046 Tasted as I transferred it to secondary. It has real good potential and I think its going to be very tasty. Makes the kit cider taste quite boring as far as the apple flavour goes. Im making it dry then adding sweetener later but for now it is very slightly sour. Has a bit of acidity and is a bit tart. But the apple tastes like it will be wonderful once its sweetened and the other traits are reduced with time? of course tastes crap as you would expect and while I have no experience on how these things change, to me it appears to on the right track to make me very happy.
Its in secondary and have moved it from 22C into our cellar which is a constant temperature controlled 15C
7 day progress looks like this
Got my other 20L in primary which I will split 15L caramel and 5L blueberry at secondary.
Between that and my first gallon batch of JAOM I think my first two weeks are going ok. Bit worried about the lack of bottles or more carboys that is going to be a problem soon. Especially with another 23L feijoa wine planned as soon as the season hits in two months.
Thanks again and I cant wait to start sampling it all
Started with a Mangrove jacks apple cider kit as a practice run which is now in bottles carbing.
A friend of mine who is far more handy than me managed to build us a diy press and muncher rig out of spare parts we scrounged and via facbook we managed to get enough apples free for 100L for him and 43L for me. Our first ciders are now on.
Video of setup. A curtain has been added to muncher to stop that overflow flying out the back. He gets very excited by it as you can tell in video. I had to edit out most his "hoofin it" exclamations but at least I now have a batch name and image idea for the bottles. Hoofin it cider.
So the first batch of pressed is a week in and I'm just keeping it simple with lalvin ec1118 og 1046 Tasted as I transferred it to secondary. It has real good potential and I think its going to be very tasty. Makes the kit cider taste quite boring as far as the apple flavour goes. Im making it dry then adding sweetener later but for now it is very slightly sour. Has a bit of acidity and is a bit tart. But the apple tastes like it will be wonderful once its sweetened and the other traits are reduced with time? of course tastes crap as you would expect and while I have no experience on how these things change, to me it appears to on the right track to make me very happy.
Its in secondary and have moved it from 22C into our cellar which is a constant temperature controlled 15C
7 day progress looks like this
Got my other 20L in primary which I will split 15L caramel and 5L blueberry at secondary.
Between that and my first gallon batch of JAOM I think my first two weeks are going ok. Bit worried about the lack of bottles or more carboys that is going to be a problem soon. Especially with another 23L feijoa wine planned as soon as the season hits in two months.
Thanks again and I cant wait to start sampling it all
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