My first batch of Ed Worts Apfelwein!

So today my new 14 gallon fermenter arrived, so I figured what better way to break it in than with a 10 gallon batch of Apfelwein! I've never brewed before or made this, this is my first run.

It looks like my beginning gravity it 1.065, so hopefully this batch turns out awesome. I plan to make many more, I took a photo of the supplies to chronicle my first fermentation:



In a few weeks I'll post a follow up and we'll see how it turns out!

are you fermenting in a dog food container?

Nice. You should be able to fit 12 gallons in there easily if you use Montrachet yeast.

Thats awesome! I am making my first 5 gallons here in a couple of weeks... or maybe I just need to buy another carboy...

haha, its not a dog food container, its a 14 gallon Tuff-Tank beer/wine fermenter. Some kibble and bits might be a nice dry hop selection though.

ELittle said:

haha, its not a dog food container, its a 14 gallon Tuff-Tank beer/wine fermenter. Some kibble and bits might be a nice dry hop selection though.

Click to expand...

lol nice add some canned wet food to up the OG

So, 2 days later and still no bubbling in the airlock. A buddy told me this could be because I only filled the tank with 10 gallons of liquid, and there is an extra 4 gallons of headspace thats empty, so hopefully it will start goin soon.

So its about 5 weeks later and I took a sample. The gravity is around 1.003 or so. The taste is kind of sweet and apple flavored and you can really taste the alcohol in it. Its delicious right now. I might give it another 2 or 3 weeks then bottle.

I used coopers ale yeast in this batch, so that might account for the not so dry taste, but I think its delicious.

Also, when I took a hydrometer reading right after pouring the sample I got a reading of 1.006. Then after it sat at room temp for 10 minutes or so the hydrometer floated way up and I got a reading of 1.030. Then 10 minutes later the hydrometer floated back down to about 1.003, anyone had that happen?

Thats the CO2 in the cider coming out. It makes it float higher. Its why you should spin it or bump it a little to float the bubbles off so it reads correctly.

This question might have been answered somewhere else, but I cant find it. I'm almost ready to bottle my cider, and I want to carb it. Ive seen people say 1oz of corn sugar per gallon dissolved into water then added to the bottling bucket.

The only thing is I have my cider in a fermenter which has a valve on it for bottling. Can i dump the sugar water into the fermenter and stir it then bottle? Or should I prime each individual bottle? And if so, how much suger do I add to say a regular 12oz beer bottle? I dont have a seperate bottling bucket so im trying to do this using only the vessel its currently in. Thanks for any ideas!

Heh, they do sell those as dog food containers... no reason it doesn't make a good brew container though, it's food grade and has a kickass seal on it. Where did you buy it from? They're friggin expensive as food containers...

I bought it here: Wine Making Supplies :: EC Kraus

Nice. I think that is the same thing as the "vittles vault"... or at least real similar. Here's one at petco:

Gamma Vittles Vault at PETCO

That price is significantly lower than what I saw in-store, they were right around $60, which is a lot if it has dog food.. worth it for beer though. I'm tempted to pick one of these up, and swap over the parts from my bucket fermenter... the lid on mine is a pain in the butt!!!

ELittle said:

This question might have been answered somewhere else, but I cant find it. I'm almost ready to bottle my cider, and I want to carb it. Ive seen people say 1oz of corn sugar per gallon dissolved into water then added to the bottling bucket.

The only thing is I have my cider in a fermenter which has a valve on it for bottling. Can i dump the sugar water into the fermenter and stir it then bottle? Or should I prime each individual bottle? And if so, how much suger do I add to say a regular 12oz beer bottle? I dont have a seperate bottling bucket so im trying to do this using only the vessel its currently in. Thanks for any ideas!

Click to expand...

NO DON'T DO THAT!!!!

if you add your priming sugar to your primary fermenter and then agitate it to blend in the primer you'll stir up all the dead and inactive yeast (lees) on the bottom of the vessel! it won't hurt you - but it might add a yeasty note to your flavor and also leave your cider Uber cloudy.
use that spigot to fill a " bottling bucket" to which you added your priming charge (a five gallon food grade pail will work fine for this)
then siphon it off (or use a bucket with a bottling spigot) into your bottles.

avoid splashing when racking to a bottling vessel -to avoid oxidizing the cider.

I just got another 14 gallon tank to use as a bottling bucket today, so i think im going to bottle this sunday! YAY! I hope the 1 ounce of sugar per gallon works ok. Ill post a final gravity later. Thanks for the help people.

So I just spent 3 hours bottling my cider. Looks like my final gravity was .996, my beginning gravity was 1.065, I'm trying to figure out how to calculate ABV

This batch was huge, it did 56 - 12 ounce bottles, 4 - 2 liter bottles, 3 bombers, 4 - 1 liter bottles, and a few others.

The ABW is 7.39, the ABV is an amazing 9.27! YEEHAW! I think i did this right.

Ha ha ha heavy on the alcohol content! This one might take some time to mellow

I guess I should point out this isn't the traditional apfelwein in Ed Worts post, as I didn't use the montrachet yeast, I used coopers ale yeast.