Man, I love Apfelwein
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ggriffi
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Quick question. I want to bottle my first batch tonight but what I don't is this. So do I sanitize the corks? If so can I do this with Star san or do I need to use something else?
jstampler said:
It wasn't the apfelwein recipe, it was straight apple juice dumped on an EC-1118 yeast cake. I added two ounces of oak chips per gallon for 3 weeks leading up to bottling. I did a gallon using natural oak and a gallon using toasted oak - both French.
The natural oak was stronger flavour but was a good amount of oak flavour for me.
I have a 6 gallon batch based on apfelwein which will be getting the oak treatment as above soon.
ggriffi
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Grimster
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3 cups of good old table sugar dissolved over heat into a couple cups of apple juice goes into my keg before the wine does. Then I purge, fill, pressurize to 30+ psi, and roll it around on the floor until my leg gets tired, then into the keezer it goes.
2 days later I can be found passed out on the couch from too much apfelly goodness.
Surprised you have to pressurize. the fermentation of the 3 cups of sugar should give you all the carbonation you need. Do you really drink it fast enough that the sweetness from the sugar remains before being fermented out?
3 cups of sugar is probably around 1.5 lbs which is almost as much as went in from the original recipe..
Pretty sure the keezer keeps it cold enough that fermentation doesn't kick back up.
Grimster
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Oh man I can only imagine what'd happen if I left the keg sitting outside of the keezer with 3 cups of sugar in there... I imagine the little blow off valve would be tested by that.
I make an apple pie syrup I like for back sweetening. Sugar wise, it's pretty much standard simple syrup. 1:2 liquid to sugar by volume if you want a smaller recipe. About 2 liters of that in a 5 gallon keg. Then let it sit on 15 psi until its ready to drink.
When's the best time to add pectic enzyme? I let mine sit in the carboy for like 2 months then it's been in the keg for a couple of weeks and I still see chill haze...
The best time to add pectic enzyme is at the BEGINNING of fermentation.
I'll be adding about 10 oz of dextrose to 32 ounces of apple juice to my bottling bucket. I intend to pasteurize my bottles so they don't explode after they've carbed up for a bit. Hoping I'm not wrong about all of this because I can't keep all of the bottle cold.
Cottonmouth
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This is the first homebrew I've ever made (assembled?). I used montrachet yeast, 6 gallons of walmart brand apple juice, and 4 pounds of inverted cane sugar filling my ferment bucket way too close to the top. I'm not sure what my SG was. I went to check it and realized I got the wrong kind of hydrometer (complete noobidity). After 3 hours the AW was blowing out of the airlock and had to switch to a blow off tube. 6 days and the SG is 0.98 and pretty strong and tart.
Is there any way to determine the alcohol content without knowing the beginning gravity?
Is there any way to determine the alcohol content without knowing the beginning gravity?
This is true. I've never tried to add it to cold cider before. It works just fine with cider at room temperature post fermentation. It does take a full day rather then the typical hour pre-fermentation.
It will also usually cause some additional fermentation as the carbohydrate is broken into fermentable sugar. So, I'd give it another week after adding the enzyme before bottling. Just to be safe.
Pasteurizing will kill the yeast, so the bottles will not explode from over pressurizing. It may be helpful to fill a small plastic soda bottle, and pasteurize the batch when the soda bottle is hard to the touch.
Even refrigerated there is a slow fermentation taking place. It's not a really a problem with kegs as the kegs are usually being used enough to relieve the extra pressure. Kegs can take much more pressure then typical dispensing pressures, and they have mechanisms built in to release pressure if it gets to high.
Yes, but it effectively ruins a sample of the brew.
http://www.monashscientific.com.au/BoilingMethod.htm
If you can tell us exactly what was in it, or put that in a brewing calculator like moscoeb suggested, it should be possible to get pretty close. Most ingredients have fairly consistent properties when you brew with them, so it should be possible to approximate an OG.
Cottonmouth
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I couldn't find a calculator that would let me input apple cider as a fermentable. I used 6 gallons of apple juice and 4 pounds of inverted sugar boiled in enough water to bring it up to the 6.5 gallon mark in the bucket.
Hmm, I'll have to check but I don't think inverting the sugar changes its fermentability or gravity points. Table sugar has 46 gravity points per lb. Apple juice is usually 1.050 or 50 gravity points per gallon. So 484 gravity points / 6.5 gallons would be ~74.46 or ~1.074. 1.074 fermented to 0.98 should give you an approximate ABV of 12.5%.
That's assuming a standard 1.050 for the juice. Seasonal apple cider, especially from small producer and late in the season, can be as high as 1.075. So it is possible you had an FG as high as 1.097. Though unlikely. We aren't that far into apple season, and about 85% of the apple juice on the market is between 1.045 - 1.055. Of the samples I've taken anyway.
Cottonmouth
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Thanks, man. I sampled it for the first time today. It could very easily be 12%, dry as a popcorn fart though.
If it's to dry, try backsweetening with some splenda. Or, if you are going to pasteurize, some apple juice concentrate.
Honestly though, I usually just keep a bottle of simple syrup around and bottle still and dry. That way you can sweeten in the glass to taste for each person, or mood.
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Took a gravity reading the other day and it is down to 1.002 after 3 weeks and is starting to clear up a lot
It varies a lot with taste. Most of one of those bags that is equivalent to 5lbs of sugar is usually about right for me.
I gotta try this one.
So, everyone here always said that Apfelwein gets better with age, and really hits its stride after a year or more. I always save a bottle to test this hypothesis, and, quite honestly, my bottle primed sparkling apfelwein always seemed better when relatively young.
Just now I opened a bottle of still Apfelwein bottled in February 2010 from my very first batch, and NOW I am a total believer!!! Smooth as silk really apple-y tasting and more complex notes than ever before. I bottled 2 750 mL wine bottles of still Apfelwein from this batch and now I wish I had bottled more. It is REALLY good. Going to have to start keeping a few non-carbonated bottles from every batch to age out.
Just now I opened a bottle of still Apfelwein bottled in February 2010 from my very first batch, and NOW I am a total believer!!! Smooth as silk really apple-y tasting and more complex notes than ever before. I bottled 2 750 mL wine bottles of still Apfelwein from this batch and now I wish I had bottled more. It is REALLY good. Going to have to start keeping a few non-carbonated bottles from every batch to age out.
aboutlastnite
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Hello, new to the forum and new to brewing. I'm sure the answers are somewhere in these 1000 + pages, but I cant find the scaling of the 5 gallon rec ipe to 1 gallon. Just do a swag on the dextrose and half pack of yeast ? Thanks.
aboutlastnite said:
Divide everything by 5
Goofynewfie
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Except the yeast
Goofynewfie said:
The yeast works fine divided by 5 as well.
I saw this recommendation elsewhere and did a 1 gallon with a full package of yeast. Let me just say it was horrible. I won't pitch a full package of yeast to 1 gallon of anything ever again.
I bottled my apfelwein. I wish I had made it even sweeter because the person I made it for may not like it. It is delicious to me but not as sweet as I think she wants it. Bottled it with 64 oz of apple juice and 12 oz of dextrose. Should be pretty well carbonated and will pasteurize in the next night or two.
I just wasn't sure if there was a major taste difference where using EC-1118 produced a totally different product. If it's very close, I'll just keep using the EC-1118. Here is the difference between my 3.5 week old batch with EC-1118 and my 2.5 month old batch with Montrachet:
are those just regular water dispenser 5gallon plastic bottles?
if so, do you have issues cleaning them? do they say 1 at the bottom? all of my bottles say 7.
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I believe they are both better bottles for fermenting beer and wine
Another little tip. You can search an individual thread for the information you seek by using the search feature in the forum.
aboutlastnite
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This was the main reason for my question, wasn't sure on the yeast amount, most of my recipe browsing pretty much says "pitch the yeast", most times not saying the amount, so you guys got me on the right track, thanks for the quick replies. Also is it ok to ziplock and refrigerate the leftover yeast to use later, or just trash it.
I'm not saying anyone is wrong, just saying I tried this on a 1 gallon batch and it was horrible to me. I read that if you seal the package in something air tight it will be okay for up to 7 days. That is what I read about US-05 on their website. I would say stick it in a zip loc bag and stick it in the freezer. Use within 7 days.
Bottles with a #7 on the bottom apparently aren't good. Supposedly they may contain BPAs. I wouldn't ferment anything in them at all. That is just me.
aboutlastnite said:
The manufacturer says to refrigerate up to 7 days. I have had mine live in the freezer for 3 months without an issue. That is completely anecdotal evidence though. Obviously, the sooner you can use it, the better.
Interesting, I wouldn't even blink at pitching a whole 5 gram packet of dry yeast into a 1 gallon batch. It would depend on the gravity though. I usually use a pitching rate calculator though. You wouldn't really need that much yeast for a 1 gallon batch unless your gravity was around 1.150.
If you are using montrachet it probably came as dried yeast. I would say that dry yeast should still be good for at least 6 months if you just tape the packet shut and stick it in the fridge. I've used dried yeast that was in my fridge for a year after it was opened. It had clearly lost some viability, so I needed twice as much as usual, but it still worked just fine.
