Just joined... lots of information to soak up (I like the cooktop pasteurising idea already!)
Anyhow, after a failed crop of apples last year (killer frost got all the forming fruit), this year the trees have gone mad.
However the first mixed batch of juice has a SG of 1.070... wow! This is getting into the Apple Wine region. Is it O.K. to add water to bring SG down to something like 1.050 or will that make the final brew a bit wishy, washy?
Are there any other "tricks" to drop the SG and still keep the flavour? I would have expected to have to add sugar to the juice, but it is what it is.
I am in Australia, retired in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains (Man from Snowy River Country)... cool climate, great for growing apples. I have already fallen into a few traps, like bottling too late and getting no fizz, not filtering enough and getting too much yeast residue (yuk!!). But with my small orchard I have to do something with the apples apart from eat them, so my excuse to SWMBO is "make cider!" We have several varieties of apples (Red Delicious, Pomme de Neige, Cox's Orange Pippin, Ballerina plus a few crab Apples. The problem batch is 5 litres (a gallon) of 50% cox's Orange Pippin (at least that is what we think they are), 40%Pomme de Neige, and the rest Red Delicious and Crab Apples
Anyhow, after a failed crop of apples last year (killer frost got all the forming fruit), this year the trees have gone mad.
However the first mixed batch of juice has a SG of 1.070... wow! This is getting into the Apple Wine region. Is it O.K. to add water to bring SG down to something like 1.050 or will that make the final brew a bit wishy, washy?
Are there any other "tricks" to drop the SG and still keep the flavour? I would have expected to have to add sugar to the juice, but it is what it is.
I am in Australia, retired in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains (Man from Snowy River Country)... cool climate, great for growing apples. I have already fallen into a few traps, like bottling too late and getting no fizz, not filtering enough and getting too much yeast residue (yuk!!). But with my small orchard I have to do something with the apples apart from eat them, so my excuse to SWMBO is "make cider!" We have several varieties of apples (Red Delicious, Pomme de Neige, Cox's Orange Pippin, Ballerina plus a few crab Apples. The problem batch is 5 litres (a gallon) of 50% cox's Orange Pippin (at least that is what we think they are), 40%Pomme de Neige, and the rest Red Delicious and Crab Apples