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I don't see why store bought apples wouldn't work quite well. The charcteristics of apples vary from year to year but are generally similar. For example, I have figures for the RD and GS from a few years ago at RD SG1.053, pH 4.3, TA 2.6 and GS 1.046, pH 3.5, TA 9.2... not dissimilar to the 2023...

FYI, this is a little off-topic but if you are right about the apple varieties, you actually have a good combination. In my small orchard I have three Red Delicious and one Granny Smith plus several other varieties, so the "leftovers" are usually RD and GS. So, in a good year I will make a...

My best result has been with 20-25% cherry, i.e. fruit added at "secondary" or when the turbulent fermentation has settled at around SG 1.030. I tried supermarket cherry juice but it just left a tart taste once the sugar had been fermented out. Adding fruit was much better. I also tried...

I am certainly no expert on nutrients as I just use DAP (a chemical compound) which provides 20% nitrogen, and it works for me. I understand that a products like Fermaid derive some nitrogen from sources other than DAP as well as including thiamine (vitamin B1) which is described as a yeast...

Interesting outcome with TF6. When the "new" Fermentis yeasts came out a few years ago I did some comparison test batches and didn't really see much difference between them despite the PR about ester profiles etc. Each batch had DAP added and they all finished around SG 1.000. The reason for...

Welcome to the fun. Everyone will have their favorite yeast. The list that you have should all be quite good. However, to answer your question from my experience... S04 is my go-to yeast. It is a well-behaved ale yeast which ferments quite quickly (i.e. two to four weeks at around 15C). It is...

To answer your questions, If you think through the cider fermentation process it is fairly straightforward... get some juice which normally would have over 100g/L of sugar. Expose the juice to yeast and let them consume some or all of the sugar and in the process convert the sugar into roughly...

Thanks for the replies... It just seems to be a matter of interpretation and understanding what is being calculated. The various calculators recommend carbonation for different types of beer. The recommendations include the CO2 already in the beverage at atmospheric pressure which doesn’t...

Hello Beer People… I am from over the fence in the HBT Cider Forum where there has been a bit of discussion on bottle priming for carbonation. There is a difference between the “rule of thumb” that is commonly used for cider, and various on-line beer priming calculators, so I wonder if anyone...

Check the SG of your apple juice and your pear juice, then make up a sample of both in the proportions you are planning to use and check the SG. The reason I suggest this is that the pear juice may have added sugar which will change the OG of your cider and hence ABV etc. Otherwise, the idea...

Yep, all of the above. IME, the yeast EC1118 is a robust fermenter that finishes neutral and very dry and can tend to strip flavour. My go-to for a basic cider is S04. This yeast is quite nutrient dependent so if the juice is low in YAN (Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen which DAP or Fermaid add to the...

Hops are fairly lightweight and I guess lavender flowers are somewhat similar but of course we don't know what intensity of flavour they give up... certainly hops can be quite strong. Looking at my notes, I seem to have worked on 0.25oz of dry hops per gallon. This translates into around 2g/L...

My suggestion would be to adopt the approach I use with hopped cider... Wait until you have racked to secondary, or if you don't do this wait until the SG is around 1.020 - 1.030. At this stage you should have enough alcohol to extract flavour and also deal with any potential nasties that you...

Yes, you might be right. I notice that in the Pressure Calculation part of CJ's book he refers to 0.5 atm of air in a bottle dissolving into the cider during bottling and indicates that this also comes into play as far as pressure in the bottle is concerned. The discussion between CJ and AL on...

Here is a bit of light bedtime reading for you… Just for a bit of entertainment (mine and yours) on a cold and wintery day and following the earlier posts on priming for volumes CO2, I did a bit of research through the usual sources (Jolicoeur, Lea and of course Dr Google). I was looking into...

Apple data is hard to find, particularly tannin. There are dribs and drabs scattered through google searches. The most useful sources I have found are... -Andrew Lea's original website Cider.org.uk. This is no longer supported and the apple data is hard to find, so after googling the website...

Sorry, I wrote the following bit (in italics) yesterday in response your 5.41 post. I wandered off to do something and obviously didn't get back to the computer to post it. Found it still sitting on the screen today (late afternoon)... it might address some of your concerns. In particular I...

Re your question from last Saturday. Hmm... teaspoons or tablespoons? I generally work on two gravity points of fermentation resulting in one volume of C02. This isn't terribly precise, but for me it doesn't matter if my cider has 2 or 2.5 volumes of carbonation. This sort of fizz is good...

330ml (12 oz) crown cap (not twist tops) beer bottles. Mostly recycled, so easy to find. I get mine from a sporting group that likes to drink lots of beer! Just the right size for me but beware 330 ml of 6.5% ABV is about 1.8 standard drinks.

Depending on what you mean by "sugar", I think you will find that the story is a little more complex than the Vinolab approach, which I find to be a good source of calculators. I believe that in the Vinolab calculator, "sugar" figure is actually "total solids", i.e. fermentable sugar plus...