New guy here.

Hello all!

So, me and a buddy have been talking about making cider for a while now. Living in Upstate NY, we can get apples anywhere at this time of year.

A couple weeks ago, he found an old 1872 Hutchinson's cider mill and press...

We decided to go for something a bit different than the local "sweet" blends of cider, so we went with Empire and Rome apples, a 2:1 ratio. Because of this we will be calling our drink Roman Empire hard cider. :rockin:

So, milling and pressing all the apples yielded a few gallons of cider. We decided to start out small, using only 2 gallons to turn hard. By the way, the gallons that we decided to not turn hard were very good, and a week later there is none left.

Now, I don't know what he is doing to his, but for me:
2 Gal (approx) fresh unpasteurized cider,
1 Lb brown sugar,
1/2 pack Red Star Premier Cuvée yeast

Right now, I have this fermenting away in a 2 gal bucket with an airlock, not the 3 piece kind.

I figure I'll let it ferment until bubbling slows to about 1 per minute. It's been going pretty steady now for a week, started 10/30/11.

I guess now I have time to look up racking info.

Ok, so a couple nights ago, bubbling was down to once every 2 minutes. Checked SG, 0.999. So, I racked into two 1 gal glass jugs. Then, I made the "mistake" of topping off with fresh cider. I say mistake, because fermentation has restarted and both jugs are now bubbling at once every 7 seconds.

I will wait until SG is back down to approx 1.000, then re-rack to clear and not add anything to fill headspace.

That cider mill/press sounds frackin' awesome! Some people have all the luck.

You might not need to re-rack to clear it; usually the yeasties and solids will drop out fairly rapidly after a few weeks. That way you wouldn't have to a)risk oxidation when you're racking again and b)worry about any extra headspace in the carboy. JMHO

Sounds tasty!