Recent content by Bourniplus

Bottle carb it. I find my cider pretty boring when it's not carbed, but once it is, to me it "comes alive".

Sequoiacider: if I may ask, how do you cover your carboys? (airlock/towel/nothing?) The reason I ask is that I always assumed that a good contact with air should be beneficial to get a good fermentation going. I'm trying to understand what happened. If this was caused by low temperature, then...

I use 500 and 330 ml beer bottles without threads. Cheap, easy to cap and easy to write what it is on the cap with a sharpie. I also use a few 750 ml sparkling wine bottles that can be capped with a beer cap. If you plan on a very high level of carbonation, champagne bottles will be stronger as...

This. Take a sample and report back, this will eliminate the guesswork of how much sugar is left.

My 2 cents: Even if the apples are treated, I don't think the natural yeast inside is dead, but even if it was, you can still try a wild ferment, I guess the yeast in your environment would "find" the apple juice.

The way I see it, it will all ferment anyway, so might as well add it right now, or it will just make the whole process longer. I've also read that about adding to secondary would keep more flavor, but meh... If you let it all ferment and age, I don't see how that would make a significant...

This is also how I see it.

Hi, RDWHAH. it all looks good to me. Soon you'll have some nice sparkling cider.

I bought what was at my LHBS: American, medium toast. I didn't take precise measurements, so don't take my word for it, but I think it would make sense to start with a small handful (1-2 tablespoons/volume of a golf ball) of chips for a 5-gallon batch. Then sample after a few days, weeks, etc...

I can't answer for the OP, but since I've started to add oak chips to my blueberry wine last year, I like the results and have added some to this year's batches.

Well, the 15 lbs figure might have been for a 5-gallon batch, and it's pretty extreme. I think many of the recipes that can be found online call for around two pounds of sugar per gallon of finished product, and it seems that the expected OG is 1,090 on average. Basically what I'm talking about...

Greetings everyone, I'm making blueberry wine with my own blueberries. Most recipes call for what I would say is a considerable amount of sugar; around 10-15 lbs for a 4-gallon batch. This year the harvest was pretty good and I started 4 batches. Adding that much sugar somehow doesn't seem...

The only amount I have in my notes from six years ago is 15ml per liter. I can't guarantee how well it would work.

Does that top layer (about 1/2 inch) feel like a kind of jelly?

Hi, I've done many batches in which I added maple syrup, both at the beginning and for bottle carbonation. In my experience, I couldn't detect any maple flavor in the finished product. However I feel better knowing that I've used a local, organic product that was made by my family, rather than...