Search results

The short answer is "whatever it takes". In my case I don't really stick to a timetable. The initial fermentation, which I do in an open container, takes anything up to four weeks or so (depending on added nutrients which will rev things along quickly) until the SG goes from 1.050 to somewhere...

Finding the right "bought" juice can be difficult. As mentioned above, I made a trial batch a while ago using straight Pink Lady (Crisps Pink) from the local supermarket and it turned out quite good without the need for any added acid or tannin. But of course, it is twice as expensive as common...

All of the above is good advice. For the first time around, my recommendation would be to just make a "straight" fully fermented cider using something like S04 or D47 yeasts. My reasoning is for you to understand just what the base product is and how it comes about before confusing the issue by...

Re your immersion heater... a couple of hints based on my experience are. - People buying Xmas or Birthday presents invariably get the wrong thing (usually because the salesman sold "something better" that doesn't do the job you want). - Look for an insulated bucket as heat loss can be an...

Yep, Fluketamer has covered most of the ground. Somewhere on the forum is a discussion about yeast where it concludes that yeast type has only a 5%-10% influence on the outcome. i.e. apple blend etc is more important. Having said that I have used the yeasts you mention and achieved good results...

Well done. It is good when things work out. Your experience with non-fermentable sweeteners isn’t uncommon as I understand that we perceive them as “lacking in body” since they don’t provide energy the same way sugar does. To give you an idea of what is going on, residual sugar in cider gives...

A pinch of DAP or similar nutrient wouldn't hurt if you add yeast. As a rough guide, check the SG after you add the fermentable sugar then add 50ppm (0.05g/L or 0.2g/gallon) of DAP for each 0.010 of SG you want to ferment back down to zero. I sometimes add a "safety dose" of about 0.1g/L DAP...

Although Grolsch acknowledge that their swing tops can leak at around 70-80 psi, I know from experience that some don't... it depends on the bottle and the seal. So the short answer is don't rely on it.

Is the cider boom over, or are we just not recording as much as we used to??? 2020=1003, 2021=???, 2022=654, 2023=931, 2024=248?

Sorry Dave, I didn't because when I received my orchard juices I went off on a tangent. One of the juices was Fuji and I noticed that although the carbohydrate level was about the same as the others, the actual sugar (i.e. sucrose) was quite low (51g/L compared with 140g/L). The explanation...

Whoops... my mistake... I am losing the plot!!! I had read your post on "Gallons of Cider" and picked up the reference to TF6 from another poster and thought it was from you. Adding DAP has worked for me on the occasions that fermentation stopped around 1.010 so hopefully it gets things going.

Hopefully by now the DAP as suggested by Maylar will have kicked things along. FYI I, have had this issue with S04 (an ale yeast) which is quite dependent on YAN. YAN can become somewhat depleted in apples from old unfertilised trees (which mine are). Claude Jolicoeur refers to this in his...

I have haven't used kits but do "optimise" my ciders to get the results that I am after. To me optimise simply means achieving the characteristics that I want, such as sweetness, acidity, carbonation, astringency, alcohol level, etc. I guess the kits as they come have the ingredients that...

Yes, I would have expected some non-linearity, and it was part of the "masterplan". However, for some reason, the carbonation fermentation went a lot faster than I expected. It started on 19 Nov and was at 1.8 bar yesterday 24 Nov... 7 Days! Normally I would expect it to take about two week or...

This is a bit long, but a few weeks ago when there was some discussion about the “usefulness” of the squeeze bottle test to assess carbonation, I suggested that I had trial taking place about this and would post about it. So here it is. I normally use a test bottle and pressure gauge to monitor...

I left them in primary for a few weeks until the colour had leached out of the peel (I have a 5 litre, large flip top fermenter which is drilled to take an airlock). At that time the SG had fallen to below 1.030 and the cider was racked into a secondary fermenter to mature and topped up as...

All of the above.... plus to answer your question about peel. I have used peel to good effect. See my post to lyanman 15 Oct or use the search function on the top RHS of the forum. I probably use a bit more peel than the video suggests, but it works for me.

The issue of carbonation has been rattling around a fair bit recently, so I have just posted "Using a pressure gauge for monitoring carbonation". This goes into a fair bit of detail about monitoring bottle pressure and what it means. Also attached is a write-up on how I monitor bottle pressure...

This is another lengthy "rave on" by me. I have covered much of this recently in responding to posts. However, there has been a bit of discussion and questions raised lately by newer members of HBT (welcome, by the way) in a variety of posts regarding carbonation and bottle pressure. So, I...

Yes, I froze the peel until I had enough or was ready to use it. My approach has been to put the peel in the primary fermenter, occupying about 20% of the space and rely on the usual "bug killing" ability of the cider to deal with any nasties i.e. campden (potassium metabisulphite) plus the...