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You could check at an up-scale grocery store. I haven't tried it yet to be able to comment on results, but I have seen that I can get pear juice at Whole Foods Market, along with a selection of other juices.

I use beer home brewing software (pretty much any would do) to compute the original gravity, record my ingredients, and note keeping in general. After that it's a matter of judging how the ingredients fit together and having a good process, and I would be pleased to find software that was more...

If it were me, I would taste it, and if OK, go ahead and enjoy it. I have one batch that for reasons I refer to as a "learning experience", had trouble getting started, and I thought would end up as a sour cider if it even turned out drinkable. After a few weeks I needed the fermenter for...

I know ciders can improve significantly with a few months of age. So can meads and some beers, which can then be good for up to a few years. For a cider that takes a few months to reach its peak, how long will it remain good? Is there anything that can help a cider stay good for more than a year?

The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP.org) is working on a cider judge certification. It should be similar to its mead judge certification, where it is an endorsement if one is already a beer judge, or if not then mead judge is the "rank" of the judge. BJCP has given a couple of trial...

Thanks very much, WoodlandBrew! Very helpful references. For others, in case "attenuation" wasn't clear, this is the amount of sugar that the yeast have consumed. A typical percentage for beer is 75%, since some types of sugar are unfermentable by the brewer's yeast. Values for mead and...

Sorry if my question wasn't clear. As WoodlandBrew explains, apparent attenuation can appear to exceed 100%, but actual attenuation will be less than 100% - which I have experienced when making wine. When brewing beer, calculating apparent attenuation has been good enough, but this breaks down...

My mead (a peach melomel) is still fermenting, so my SG readings use my refractometer instead of the hydrometer to not use a larger sample than needed until it's done. But unless I get informed otherwise, I think BrewCalc on my iPhone does an adequate job of calculating the SG for a...

I would include Vienna as a base malt. It has high diastatic power, and is highly converted so it needs lower mash and boil times than 2-row or pilsner - besides tasting great. Although your buy doesn't include DME, you could still use DME or LME when a style needs 2-row or pilsner, buying...

Tommysauder - Yikes! "Gusher" sounds like an understatement.

Thanks, frankvw. Mine settled back down after a couple of days, and now the yeast islands are gradually settling. My issue must have just been the hot weather for the couple of days. I'll bottle this early next week, hopefully with as good results as yours.

Frankvw, I'm curious whether you have any further updates. I have two small batches (luckily just experiments for comparing some ingredients, so no big loss if something is wrong) in which I have a similar behavior using S-33 yeast: the fermentation seemed to start normally, then the air lock...