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I guess I was addressing what seemed like the real problem in the OP: the efficiency. Nottingham is pretty attenuative, so I'm not surprised he finished at that FG when mashing at 151. I agree with everything said on this post, especially the part about Ray Daniels book. Most grains do...

It sounds like you have a great experiment going. A lot of people get great ciders from wild ferments, although its real unpredictable. I've tried this with beer without any luck. Either way, you're doing it old-school now. I'd throw an airlock on that stuff and see where it takes you. You...

I over-hopped a Kolsch one time and it was unpalatable due to bitterness. I gave it about 3-4 months conditioning at room temp and it turned out to be a great beer. I have no idea if this also applies to coffee, though. As I see it, the two options you have are to: 1. Age it and taste...

The first thing I would try is to get a bottle of iodophor from your HBS. When you're done with the mash, draw off a small amount of the wort and mix in a few drops of the iodophor. You should see a nice brown color. If you get a black color, you haven't converted all of your starch. This can...

I happened on this yesterday while reading Jim Liddil's lambic page: "Lambic is made by what many consider an anachronistic process. The grist is made up of 30-40% raw unmalted wheat with the remainder being malted barley. The mashing process is carried out using a technique called turbid...

I was trying a decoction mash on a wheat beer earlier this week and so decided to do an iodine starch conversion test, just to see how things were going. I never really got full conversion despite some nice long alpha and beta rests. Has anyone else had this problem? Is this typical for wheat...

Read John Palmer's "How To Brew" to start. There's an old edition on-line for free here: http://www.howtobrew.com/

Second this. Too many adjuncts make cider taste like rocket fuel and hide the apple flavors/aromas. You already did the best thing for yourself by taking the time to get good fresh juice. For yeast I also like cote du blanc, but ale yeasts like nottingham also work well. Your juice has...

Great post! Just as a small point, I don't like to dump the must that I use for measuring gravities back into the main fermentation chamber. The risk of infection isn't worth the extra 4 oz or so, but you're probably right that it doesn't make much of a difference. This is a great site that...

Has anyone out there tried a commercial malolactic culture in cider? Would you recommend this or not?

As long as its just a little, then its normal, just a little "Apple Krausen." You shouldn't see near as much crap on your fermenter as you would with any beer. This stuff won't hurt your cider too much as long as you rack in a timely fashion. At your temps I would guess you could leave that...

Apple juice + yeast = my favorite recipe. No, I'm not trying to be a dick. Hard cider is really easy and there's lots of great recipe's on here. EdWorts is really easy and popular. For my two cents, the quality of the juice that you use will basically define how good the cider is. For my...

Why did you choose those specific yeasts? It seems like it would be cool to do a side-by-side with the same yeast and two "different" musts

I did a parallel ferment of a fresh juice cyser last year with nottingham, cote-du-blanc, redstar champagne, and the white labs dry english cider yeast. I let them all ferment in the 68 degree range. IMO the cote-du-blanc and the nottingham were the best. The nottingham left a little more of...

Just finished "lagering" this one for about 5 weeks and it tastes great. I really like the honey malt in this recipe and the choice of hops. I used the WLP029 which left a nice clean flavor with some esters, but didn't flocculate very well at all despite the extended cold conditioning. A great...

Have you had any off flavors from this?

Just ordered some keg supplies from these guys. The shipping was a little sluggish (took about a week to for them to put it in the mail) but you can't beat the prices...