Recent content by Fyrespinner

We will be pressing organic apples (all local organic) into cider today, and probably most nights this week. All you have to do is show up, help cut some apples, and you get fresh cider right off the press. We will be pressing till dark, or a little after. our address is 1321 N Mountain Rd...

Mine started cloudy, and finished cloudy....so I ran it through a 1 micron filter, and all was clear. And it made the flavor a little more crisp and refined.

I brewed a cider with organic apples and added brown sugar and molasses on initial ferment (White Labs English Cider yeast) I sweetened back with one apple juice concentrate (straight to the keg) then one pound honey and 1-32oz organic cherry juice. Topped off the keg, and shook for about 2-3...

So this year I decided to build my own cider press. I did so using white oak and a 12 ton (Harbor Freight) shop press. I also needed a grinder, so I bought a 7/8 hp stainless steel garbage disposer attached to a wash tub I got at home depot. I had everything else for the setup as we vended food...

And recently spent a **** ton of money on carboys.... I guess I'm ready for just about anything now, (2 bottle buckets, 3 brew buckets, 1 55gallon drum, 4 six gallon glass carboys, 2 five gallon plastic jugs, 8 airlocks, ect... and all the carboys and jugs full of cider. I guess I'll need to buy...

I built a cider press, grinder, ect.. the whole set up. We started by harvesting my neighbors tree and a tree from one of the properties I did some work at. That got us about 400-500 lb of unsprayed, organic apples..... Then I put out a post on Craigslist wanting unsprayed apples, that got us 5...

My buddy and I had already picked the apples, all they had to do is wash and cut. You would really be surprised at how many people would rather buy a product they really have no idea what it contains than to do a little bit of work in exchange for something you helped make yourself. I've seen...

I found it at my local farmers market in the dry goods stand. I have not found it in any of my local grocery stores... but I wasn't really looking either. BTW, I used 4 cups of syrup 2:1 to sweeten, and yes, I am that much of a sweet tooth.... some of my fav's are ice wines, and fruit wines...

I did the research, yes it can if you have a sensitive system, but if you don't no ill effects. No real aftertaste that I can tell, and it is a "natural" sweetener, we'll see after drinking a few, maybe I'll have to save those for people I don't care for.....lol

It does sound excessive, but I tasted it, adding 1 cup to a gallon, it was very sweet, but good, cut it back to 4 cups, and it's just right (for me) I like dessert wines and the other sweet stuff, not so big on dry at all.

I have 5 gallons of cider sweetened back with xylitol, was at 1.000sg, how much corn sugar should I use for bottling? (And avoid bottle bombs!) And another question... Do you let it start back up in the carboy or do you prime and bottle right away?

I've got my first batch (5 gal) of cider / apple wine just about ready to bottle. It is bone dry @ 1.000. I read on another thread somewhere to use xylitol (a non ferment-able sweetener) to sweeten it back to where I want it to be before bottling. I used fresh pressed cider (1.045) and added...

Thank you. And again thank you to everyone for this awesome wealth of information!

I did a lot of research on water kefir grains. My mother in law used them for grape juice and also a kind of lemonade. I then used her extras to start ginger beer. The kefir will mutate slightly to fit whatever you are brewing trading off one kind of yeast for something else, only thing is you...

My name is Bob Karns, I live in Linglestown, Pennsylvania. I am merely a novice at brewing. My first attempts at brewing were using water kefir grains and made "proper" ginger beer. I did the research, most ginger beers are made using a mother, the mother passed down from brewer to brewer is...