First time experiment

[Makilio]

Hi everyone. My wife and I are trying our first cider brew. I am Polish so I am sorry if there are English problems.

Our plan is not to make the best taste cider now, but to make it right and then experiment more with taste.

- We got a press and grinder and fermenting barrel from family, cleaned 100%.
- We got the 4 apple types (sharp, bitter, the rest) and did the press.
-We are using a small batch to start, maybe this is problem. 5 liters of cider in 30 liter bucket.
-we put in liquid and some of the leftover...broken apples (?) from press in the bucket.
-we added pectic enzyme
- we added sugar (maybe too much)
- yeast (we made it a little hot first) and yeast food
-some water
-we had a problem with hydrometer, it was broken. I know this is big but we left for a holiday.
-closed, airlock, done.
- it is 4 days now, we have returned, hydrometer tomorrow.

This was the system we used, but a lot of our information did not match so I do not feel very good about it. Please correct and help, for future improvements.

I love to read the recipes here - maybe soon for us

Thank you

 

[Makilio]

Update: My worries became too big so I looked inside, it was covered with white mold, and yes it was mold. So something did wrong.

A lot of homebrew equipment, like special yeast and things of this, we can not get very easy here. So we want to do it simple, traditional. Please help.

 

[bmd2k1]

Guessing since it wasn't pasteurized...treating with campden tablets would be a good 1st step. Will kill bacteria & inhibit wild yeast growth [emoji111]

Make sure everything that touches your cider gets properly sanitized...StarSan is great.

Cheers & good luck!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Makilio - and welcome. Your English is very good.
If you add pieces of fruit (and you don't need to if you are pressing the juice from apples) then you do need to make certain that the fruit is always kept soaking and so you need to stir the juice several times a day to prevent the fruit floating to the surface and drying out. As it dries it will become the home for all kinds of spoilage organisms and star san (or K-meta) will not help.

If you are making cider and not apple wine then there is really no need to add any sugar. Apples have enough sugar to provide you with juice at about 1.050. That is a potential ABV of about 6.5%. That is a cider. If you want a drink closer to 12% then you do need to add sugar but you also need to make sure that the flavor and balanced against the ABV ....That's not a difficult challenge but it is not so simple... unless all you are looking for is the buzz from the alcohol. A good wine is harder to make than a good cider... Good luck.

 

[Makilio]

Than you, everyone. I will use your advice and give updates soon. I appreciate it a lot