B. Nektar Zombie Killer Clone

[decoleur]

KeyWestBrewing and QuercusMax,

what are your current recipes? What yeasts are you using and what nutrients? Also how important is kegging, I still bottle is this going to be a problem?

I am getting 12lbs of star thistle and itching to play with the local hand pressed ciders. I am sitting on some cranberry and some pomegranate unfiltered juices that might end up in the mix.

This thread has made me thirsty.

Cheers!

-decoleur

 

[QuercusMax]

Last batch I tried to rush and use top-cropped S04 from a pale ale that was at high krausen. Only fermented down to 1.016, so I left out the honey. Was pretty nice.

Current batch I'm doing with wlp013. Will see in another week or 2.

As far as keg vs bottle - you can bottle pasteurize. It worked well for me, but you have to try samples every day or so until it's just right, then pasteurize it all. Kegging is 100x easier.

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

KeyWestBrewing and QuercusMax,

what are your current recipes? What yeasts are you using and what nutrients? Also how important is kegging, I still bottle is this going to be a problem?

I am getting 12lbs of star thistle and itching to play with the local hand pressed ciders. I am sitting on some cranberry and some pomegranate unfiltered juices that might end up in the mix.

This thread has made me thirsty.

Cheers!

-decoleur

6 gal Publix cider
1 lb of quality honey
1 pack of Nottingham
1 L of tart cherry juice

After fermentation add the # of honey and liter of tart cherry juice to the bottling bucket and gently stir in well. I heat the honey a little to make it easier to mix into solution.
After bottled open one bottle per day to check carbonation. You should be ready to pasteurize by day 3 or so. Its important you don't wait too long or you can't pasteurize the bottles because they'll explode.
That's all there is to my recipe. Super simple but so far its gotten great feedback and even medaled in comp IIRC. Also as a side note, other juices work great with my recipe just add to taste. I make an Apple Pie Cider based on this recipe that beats the brakes off Cigar City's but that recipes top secret

 

[JonGrafto]

6 gal Publix cider
1 lb of quality honey
1 pack of Nottingham
1 L of tart cherry juice

After fermentation add the # of honey and liter of tart cherry juice to the bottling bucket and gently stir in well. I heat the honey a little to make it easier to mix into solution.
After bottled open one bottle per day to check carbonation. You should be ready to pasteurize by day 3 or so. Its important you don't wait too long or you can't pasteurize the bottles because they'll explode.
That's all there is to my recipe. Super simple but so far its gotten great feedback and even medaled in comp IIRC. Also as a side note, other juices work great with my recipe just add to taste. I make an Apple Pie Cider based on this recipe that beats the brakes off Cigar City's but that recipes top secret

If I am going to keg this, should I use any campden before I put the honey and cherry juice in?
I didn't know if the extra fermentation of bottling would give a different flavor..

Or I could add the honey and cherry juice, let it sit for 2 or 3 days to ferment the honey and cherry juice a little and then cold crash and keg??

Thoughts?? Suggestions??

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

If I am going to keg this, should I use any campden before I put the honey and cherry juice in?

I didn't know if the extra fermentation of bottling would give a different flavor..



Or I could add the honey and cherry juice, let it sit for 2 or 3 days to ferment the honey and cherry juice a little and then cold crash and keg??



Thoughts?? Suggestions??

I never use campden I just add the juice to the keg before I rack the beer over and pour the heated honey in slowly during the transfer. Then throw the keg in the keezer so it doesn't kick up fermentation. I like it better on draft because none of the juice or honey gets fermented out. I also think the flavor holds up better because its unpasteurized.

 

[QuercusMax]

I've been adding sorbate when kegging, although I don't know if it does anything. I mostly do it so that if I bottle some up it's less likely to start fermenting again.

 

[rtsitler]

6 gal Publix cider
1 lb of quality honey
1 pack of Nottingham
1 L of tart cherry juice

After fermentation add the # of honey and liter of tart cherry juice to the bottling bucket and gently stir in well. I heat the honey a little to make it easier to mix into solution.
After bottled open one bottle per day to check carbonation. You should be ready to pasteurize by day 3 or so. Its important you don't wait too long or you can't pasteurize the bottles because they'll explode.
That's all there is to my recipe. Super simple but so far its gotten great feedback and even medaled in comp IIRC. Also as a side note, other juices work great with my recipe just add to taste. I make an Apple Pie Cider based on this recipe that beats the brakes off Cigar City's but that recipes top secret

Do you ferment dry?
What's your SG and FG?
Any other yeasts you have tried?



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

Do you ferment dry?
What's your SG and FG?
Any other yeasts you have tried?



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Close to dry. Generally by 17-21 days its in the 1.006-1.010 range and I keg it up. OG IIRC is 1.050 and FG is anywhere in the range I mentioned before. I've tried other yeasts but I prefer Nottingham and a cool fermentation. One I've yet to try though is Sweet Mead yeast which I've read good reviews on.

 

[QuercusMax]

Just took Best of Show (cider) in Son of Brewzilla. This time I fermented with WLP013 and used 8oz honey. Still sams club Apple juice and Knudsen tart cherry juice.

 

[QuercusMax]

Just took Best of Show (cider) in Son of Brewzilla. This time I fermented with WLP013 and used 8oz honey. Still sams club Apple juice and Knudsen tart cherry juice.

Correction: I was looking at the notes from an earlier batch. This one used WLP029 Kolsch yeast (repitched from a Kolsch).

I backsweetened with 14oz honey, as this one fermented down to 1.001.

 

[decoleur]

QuercusMax-

What are you entering it as?

 

[QuercusMax]

QuercusMax-

What are you entering it as?

Fruit Cider (28B), Medium Sweet, Petillant carbonation. Special ingredients sour cherry and honey.

My thought this time around was using the Kolsch yeast would give it a little extra appleyness, since WLP029 tends to throw some really nice delicate apple/pear esters when fermented in the mid-60s.

 

[treacheroustexan]

Correction: I was looking at the notes from an earlier batch. This one used WLP029 Kolsch yeast (repitched from a Kolsch).

I backsweetened with 14oz honey, as this one fermented down to 1.001.

Saw that, congrats! Son of Brewzilla was the first competition I entered. I had a great time. Your recipe looks delicious. Congrats.

 

[QuercusMax]

Another gold medal for this recipe at Beer for ****s in Zanesville - this time with Cote de Blanc yeast.

 

[BruceGrossman]

Zombie Killer is an attempted clone of Acoustic Draft Mead Cherry BzZz which is a hybrid "methomel".

Cheers!

Bruce Grossman

 

[Rivermead]

Not sure I got this right. At 6 weeks the cherry doesn't come through. How long to age? I followed KeyWests instructions

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

Thats odd the tart cherry should be pretty noticeable.

 

[Strut]

I just pitched a 4 gallon batch using cider and some K1-V1116 I had laying around.

Thanks for the recipe!

 

[Strut]

I racked my 4g gallon batch to a secondary today over k-meta & sorbate. FG was 1.001. I planned to leave it in the secondary to clear a few weeks, but noticed a crack in the carboy as I was moving it storage! My only good option was to go ahead and keg it. I racked it into the keg on top of 22oz of organic tart cherry juice and 2/3 lb local wildflower honey. We'll see how it goes after the cold crash and some carbonation.

 

[Strut]

Well, the first half dozen or so pints were pretty damn ruff. :cross: As expected, I got a lot of sediment at first, since I had to forgo the secondary and cold-crashed in the keg.

The second issue was that I heated the honey in the cherry juice to dissolve, then ranked on top of this. This did not mix well in the keg and the first few pours were syrupy. Live and learn! I won't make that mistake again. I'm sure I'm not as sweet as the original recipe calls for, but it is very drinkable.

Third, is a bit of an off smell I can't put my finger on. Its nothing obnoxious or that comes through in the taste. I didn't notice it until it was carbonated. We'll see if it subsides.

Even after this, the result is pretty damn tasty! I bet it improves greatly with another couple more weeks ageing. I think this would be great Graff'd up a bit with a couple pounds of light DME and some carapills for head retention.

 

[JonM]

Good to know about the trouble with dissolving the honey in the cherry juice. I started a batch on Saturday and that's exactly how I planned to add the honey and cherry juice. I take it shaking it up got it all distributed?

 

[Strut]

Good to know about the trouble with dissolving the honey in the cherry juice. I started a batch on Saturday and that's exactly how I planned to add the honey and cherry juice. I take it shaking it up got it all distributed?

I didn't bother trying to mix again at this point, as it had been cold crashed for nearly two weeks and I didn't want to have to let it clear again. Most of the syrup came out in the first pint, with a lot of sediment, so the damage was done. I'd guess that 1/2-2/3 of the honey and juice got properly dissolved in my batch.

If you keg, just purge the oxygen and shake the hell out of it a few times over a couple days. I did shake well once when I first kegged it, and this wasn't enough. Otherwise, I'd stabilize and rack to a secondary or tertiary and mix really well before bottling.

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

If you heat up the honey it dissolves much easier. I add the cherry juice to the keg then slowly pour in the honey while racking over the cider. Seems to work pretty well.
Of course purging the oxygen and shaking it up probably does the trick too.

 

[QuercusMax]

I put the honey and cherry juice in a 2-quart saucepan and heat it on the stove while stirring, till it reaches 170.

I pour it into the already-filled and chilled keg, purge headspace a few times, seal the lid, shake like crazy, then put in my keezer and hook up the gas. Never had any problems with un-mixed honey.

 

[Strut]

Well my off-smell is completely gone now. I think it was the sediment getting aerosol'd by the carbonation. Now that she is pretty clear, the smell is undetectable. The flavors are coming around now also. I'll definitely give this one another try soon. Thanks for the recipe.

 

[QuercusMax]

Since I'm pretty much constantly making this stuff, and I can make it good consistently, I was thinking of trying something different: oaking it.

Anybody have a thought as to what kind of chips might be good? I'm thinking some oaky tannins might give it some more complexity.

 

[KeyWestBrewing]

Since I'm pretty much constantly making this stuff, and I can make it good consistently, I was thinking of trying something different: oaking it.

Anybody have a thought as to what kind of chips might be good? I'm thinking some oaky tannins might give it some more complexity.

What about soaking some french oak in sherry and using that?

 

[QuercusMax]

Don't have any sherry, but maybe I'll try the French oak. Probably do 2.5 gals on the oak and leave 2.5 unoaked so I can blend if needed.

 

[Ruckusz28]

I too took a shot at this with some minor alterations. This is for a 5 gallon batch. I raised the honey content up to 4lb and used Wyeast Kolsch instead of Notty.

Additives
.25 tsp Potassium metabisulphate
2.5 tsp. Pectic encyme w/ 1.25 tsp. Wine Tannin
2.5 tsp Potassium sorbate
.25 tsp Potassium metabisulphate

OG 1.07 on 12/6/14
Gravity when racked on 12/22/14 - .001

The cyser was fairly cloudy at the point when I tasted and racked it, but WOW what a flavor. Very fruity with a sweet honey profile. I will be backsweetening with 32 oz Traverse City Michigan Tart Cherry Juice and honey to taste. It looks like I may have to rack it one final time. If so, i'll clear it with gelatin and cold crash. Progress to follow.

 

[decoleur]

I too took a shot at this with some minor alterations. This is for a 5 gallon batch. I raised the honey content up to 4lb and used Wyeast Kolsch instead of Notty.

Additives
.25 tsp Potassium metabisulphate
2.5 tsp. Pectic encyme w/ 1.25 tsp. Wine Tannin
2.5 tsp Potassium sorbate
.25 tsp Potassium metabisulphate

OG 1.07 on 12/6/14
Gravity when racked on 12/22/14 - .001

The cyser was fairly cloudy at the point when I tasted and racked it, but WOW what a flavor. Very fruity with a sweet honey profile. I will be backsweetening with 32 oz Traverse City Michigan Tart Cherry Juice and honey to taste. It looks like I may have to rack it one final time. If so, i'll clear it with gelatin and cold crash. Progress to follow.

what was your schedule for additives?