Recent content by siletzspey

I just drank my last Fall 2012 cider, which was not treated with k-meta at bottle up, and it tasted fine. ABV was 10%-ish and pH 3.8-ish. For the '12 - '14 seasons, I universally didn't use k-meta at bottle up, and have yet to see any of the apple ciders/wines go bad, but all my berry and plum...

In my own experience over 5 seasons, a young cider can taste good at the time, but once it ages 9-12 months, in retrospect that same young cider tasted comparatively thin, and often had weird, sour and sulfur notes in it. I've done ciders with commercial yeasts where at 3 months I've said "it's...

Search for "vented silicon stopper". The flap lets them burp if pressure builds. I use them for bulk aging, and will be bottling up two 3ga carboys tomorrow that aged for a year, and they look great. --SiletzSpey

With <1/8" of head-space in 750ml bottles, I found it very hard to get past 18 months without serious oxidation in strawberry and plum wine. Per others here, I started bottling with a 1/4 - 1/2 dose of k-meta, and early signs are encouraging. --SiletzSpey

Like others, I use swing-top aka Grolsch-style bottles for all my cider and berry wine, and still have some good bottle-aged cider from 2013. I haven't aged berry wine successfully beyond 2+ years, but it's far more likely it's due to my lack of regular dosing with k-meta prior to and at bottle...

I'll be curious what others say, but I don't worry about pitching a few days late. The only risk of pitching late is that the wild yeast will have a chance to ramp up, before any commercial yeasts overtake them. --SiletzSpey

331 + 14 = 345

Since my wife and I just pressed 14 gallons of cider for our 2016 vintages, it was time to do our annual blind shootout of our year-old 2015 vintages involving 5 different yeasts. From the bottom up, the results were: #5 - Nottingham Compared to the others, had the thinnest taste and was dull...

Despite keeping a minimal head-space in 500ml and 750ml glass bottles, and for the last 2 years adding k-meta at bottle up, I'm finding that my strawberry, raspberry and blackberry wines start to oxidize within a year. The wines take on a rusty orange tinge, and with the raspberry and...

For yellow and yellow-red Asian plums (Shiro and Early Golden mix specifically), does anyone have a recommendation on what yeast to use? For seemingly red-ish Asian plums, I see several RC-212 recommendations. In the past I have tried EC-1118 and 71B-1122, but premature oxidation issues...

I'm jacking some cider, first time, and have taken 3.75ga down to 1.25ga so far. Now a bunch of questions are occurring to me: - I started with cider that had ~40 ppm of S02 (k-meta). Will jacking drive the S02 off, or concentrate it? - Once jacked to 30% ABV or more, is some S02 still...

Regarding MLF... at 6 months, most of my thrice-racked bulk-aging carboys still have very obvious bubbles rising up from the depths, but no bubbles are blowing out the airlock. I have been assuming MLF. Is it? This is the first year I've bulk aged beyond 2 months, and have been able to visually...

Without fail, I've always had cider taste substantially better after 6+ months of aging. I don't doubt that young cider can be good, but I think a lot of people who skip aging don't realize how much better their cider could be. --SiletzSpey

My cider carboys are 5 months old, and for the last 2+ months I've been getting active bubbles coming up from the depths, and they form a 1/16" - 1/4" ring of crystal-clear foam around the top edge of the cider. Even so, I don't have any noticeable airlock activity! Also, I didn't see any...

944 + 29 = 973 (973 / 121 posts = avg person is doing 8 gallons) --SiletzSpey