Success :)

Hello

Just thought i would say a thank you for this great site. I have been a cider lover for the past few years. There is nothing i hate more than cheap rubbish calling itself cider.

I started a few batches of cider experiments a month or so ago. I created a 5litre batch which consisted of 5 litres of pure apple juice, 4 sugar cubes, a teaspoon of good quality honey and some cider yeast.

Now after 1 week I syphoned it from the original demijohn and put it into another for a week until it was clear. I then bottled into 1 litre PET bottles with a swig of apple juice and 2 suger cubes.

I have cracked a bottle open tonight and

Its lovely. I'm not sure if its because i made it or not but its one of the nicest ciders I have tasted, it actually tastes apple like and not some over carbonated alcopop. The closest a have drank was some proper Cornish scrumpy I had a couple months back while at a steam show down in England. It has a very delicate carbonation and is what i would call medium dry.

Just thought i should let you guys know this, not sure why but everyone should try this. Got another 10 litres on the way and this time going to try a few different recipes with more honey and will try to let it sit for a bit longer.

mmmm sounds tasty. i have to try that recipe. we brewed 10 gallons of fresh cider from the orchard recently. ill have to try this small recipe on my own just in case ours doesn't turn out.

I made a similar one recently called "turbo cider". Very similar recipie except I didn't add anything during bottling except for the recommended amount of bottling sugar. I tastes some as I was bottling and it sure has some kick to it and it tasted pretty good. I can wait to try it in a week so see what the carbonation adds. Then I am going to heat pasteurize the remaining bottles.

Congratulations on your success, Thrall!

Varroa said:

I made a similar one recently called "turbo cider". Very similar recipie except I didn't add anything during bottling except for the recommended amount of bottling sugar. I tastes some as I was bottling and it sure has some kick to it and it tasted pretty good. I can wait to try it in a week so see what the carbonation adds. Then I am going to heat pasteurize the remaining bottles.

Click to expand...

Varroa, if this is the first time you've done this, keep an eye on the carbonation, you might not want to wait a week to check on carbonation. If it gets too carbonated, you can't heat pasteurize without risk of blowing caps and bottles.

Thanks for the tip. I only have 4 bottles so I can't do the normal "crack one and check ever couple of days". FG was 1.010 when I bottled and I added .7 oz of priming sugar for my 1 gallon batch. When do you recommend I try heat pasteurizing? I do have one bottle that wasn't completely full so and I am using flip tops so maybe I can just crack that bottle in a couple of days to see how it is doing. I also have some stuff from a wine making place that is suppose to add sweatness and it kills yeast so if I end up over carbonating then I can try just adding some to each bottle to stop the fermentation process.

Varroa said:

Thanks for the tip. I only have 4 bottles so I can't do the normal "crack one and check ever couple of days". FG was 1.010 when I bottled and I added .7 oz of priming sugar for my 1 gallon batch. When do you recommend I try heat pasteurizing? I do have one bottle that wasn't completely full so and I am using flip tops so maybe I can just crack that bottle in a couple of days to see how it is doing. I also have some stuff from a wine making place that is suppose to add sweatness and it kills yeast so if I end up over carbonating then I can try just adding some to each bottle to stop the fermentation process.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how to describe over-carbonation other than that its overcarbonated, gushing all over the place. The stove-top pasteurizing is simple and easy, but it depends upon stopping the carbonation before its too much.

You're probably fine, my ears just pricked up when I read you saying you were waiting a week to check on carbonation - that's usually fine for me (with the yeast I use, the batch sizes I use, etc.)