Recent content by Tchib

Thanks for all the replies! Glad to hear about ale yeast being the all round favorite. Anyone know about any good perry recipes with ale yeast?

You wonderful legend of a man.

You can vaccume, trap, swat and spray all you want but it's simply the time of the year for them. Keep the kitchen clean, replace your traps, eliminate any standing moisture and you can keep them to the minimum but I doubt very much you can ever eradicate them. They are super resilient, recently...

I break the bag and boil a liter of water with two or three bag-fulls (spoonfulls if you use loose leaf like a weirdo). Should be black tea, earl grey or something strong. Once the tea is super black and strong I throw it in with the apple juice before pitching. Of course it needs to be cool...

Prime with the Extract, priming sugar might be overkill. If the plum extract is actually made of plums the fructose will ferment giving a plumesque, but not a 'plum' flavor. IF however it's mostly flavoring then perhaps it will work to ferment now. It's a pretty far fetched question but that's...

That must be a USA thing, I've only ever seen a couple unpopular ones in Europe. Do they really taste that great or do you think it might have a little to do with marketing, Halloween parties and novelty?

Hi all, Just saw a few comments on what results different yeasts give when added to plain cider, AKA apple juice, maybe a bit of lemon. Normal sugar levels, no special ingredients. I have heard Ale yeast give a mellow low carb with little bite and a sweet finish. Champagne gives a crisp...

There was a guy who made some cider with apple pie spices, whatever they are. Being European I don't really know what it should taste like but here is the link anyway. :) good luck. P.s. finely chopped ginger and cinnamon IN the fermentation bucket for the duration of the brew gives a good...

Alas, your soil type might well need all the help it can get. I don't take offence to being called a hippy gardener but I just do what works for me. With just four plants it should be no problem to make a little patch and drip irrigate it. Place the pipes on or maybe under a layer of mulch, be...

Sounds icky, I guess it comes down to this: is the time, malts, money, keg space/bottles and effort worth a beer that tastes like a gourd? hmmmm...

Depends if you want organic or quick-fix really. I suppose one could plow it up and plant canes and lines and fertilize it with oil fractions and chemicals and produce lots of hops. But if you want to go green (and more delicious) don't plow it up! The soil takes years to develop it's own...

Yea, I gots that with a very nice cooked apple cider, it smells like egg salad left out overnight. Pretty sure it's just sulpher because as I said, it was boiled out completely and the yeast was pitched clean, albeit a little warm. Just realised this is an old post, my bad.

This recipe is not so much a recipe as a historical process the average poor farmer in Europe would have taken to 'preserve' his apple crop. The apples used would not have been store bought dessert apples unless he was wealthy, instead they would have been tart large cooking and cider apples...