Recent content by Rick Stephens

interesting results. I never had anything last that long, makes me wonder what triggers going stale or bad. Sounds you have perfect cleanliness to remain quality after that amount of time.

Unlike some others, I often use tea at the start to add some tannins. Also sometimes just use wine tannin powder to supplement instead. I always adjust the pH to where I want it by adding acids. At times I use a particular sugar, like agave, or brown, or corn sugar etc, to achieve some given...

Most of the yeasts I use recommend in the 60's. I stored some bottles that were bottle carbing in the sunroom once, while that room is part of the house, we close all the heat vents and let it cool off. Those bottle would not restart until I brought them back into the basement which is always in...

Start reading up the data sheets from the manufacturers of the yeasts you use. You will need to stay in the neighborhood of viable temperature range. Personally, I don't think you will like the results of fermenting at 50ƒ. As far as avoiding hammer head, what ABV do you aim for? High cider ABV...

Great post!

I have found which yeast I use to be one of the most important considerations for what kind of flavors I get in the end product. I'd be hard pressed to go random with wild yeast these days. I've done it, never quite know what yer gonna end up with.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/heat-pasteurisation-and-carbonation-for-sweet-cider.689515/ If you get bottle content temps to 150ƒ you can consider the yeast safely dead.

I would surely rack it off and leave behind any 'scum'. How to handle pellicles is always a debate. I dislike them and feel they have to have negative taste effects on my cider, so I try and either rack off n top off, hoping it doesn't return, or rack off and bottle early. If it is a pellicle...

More likely a pellicle, but better pictures would help. Pellicles come from a bit of bacteria and a little oxygen. To eliminate most introduction of oxygen in secondary means limiting both the amount of airspace left at the top of a carboy by topping off and limiting surface area of the must by...

Rack it into a bucket and leave the pellicle behind. Even if you leave behind a cup of cider to accomplish it. Wash your carboy, rack back into it and top it off. Picture below has one bottle in secondary on the left, topped off for the long haul, and two in primary.

A pellicle. A little oxygen and a bit of a bacteria and you get a dry floater. Hard to get rid of once you got it. I recently had a 5 gallon cider batch in a big mouth bubbler, freshly in secondary, that formed one. I skimmed it off and re-racked the batch only to have it form again overnight...

I would bet money that once your internal temps hit 150, if you pulled the bottles and set aside to start another run you would have plenty of PUs to accomplish your task. Sitting at 150 for an additional 10 minutes is, IMHO, all extra, and unnecessary time.

If you add sugar it will turn into alcohol unless you have no active yeast. If you want it sweeter without more alcohol you have to do a yeast kill. If you add more sugar now you will just get more fermentation from that sugar as well as what is left from your primary. 1118 is going to finish...

Lasts longer when they don't really like it.

Surface area, surface area, surface area. Rack it off and get rid of the dry pellicle and then fill near to the top. From now on, do that when you rack the first time and you won't see a pellicle form at all. Yes, you can purge with C02, but in this case the process has already started. A...