Fyrespinner
Member
My name is Bob Karns, I live in Linglestown, Pennsylvania.
I am merely a novice at brewing.
My first attempts at brewing were using water kefir grains and made "proper" ginger beer. I did the research, most ginger beers are made using a mother, the mother passed down from brewer to brewer is not the true to form starter. They are the "bastard child" of kefir.... The kefir grains contain all the symbiotic yeasts and bacterias required to brew the ginger beer to original flavor.
I also did the same with apple juice. But alas, I let my grains die by letting the alcohol content get too high before racking off the grains and starting a new batch. (Only pain is you have to keep it going, and the grains multiply by half or more every batch) I had 10 gallon jugs going at one time before "pickleing" all my grains.
I made some really good cider using White Labs sweet mead yeast. Bottled it way too early and (good thing I used flip tops) became way, way, too carbonated. It usually took 15 minutes or so to open a bottle without it shooting out half of it on the floor (or ceiling)
This year I built an apple grinder and cider press. I was able to pick 6 trees worth of organic, unsprayed apples. We processed about 2000 lbs of apples. I paid all the people who helped in cider, and kept about 43 gallons out of about 200 or so gallons we pressed. We drank 3 gallons fresh, and I have one 6 gallon carboy going with the first batch of cider (White Labs English Cider Yeast WLP775), and just pitched in the lees off the first batch into 35 gallons of fresh cider.
I used 2lb brown sugar per every five gallons of cider, and 2lbs black strap molasses for the batch. I also roughly ground a container of cinnamon sticks and threw them into the batch as well.
I did pasteurize all the fresh cider, one because of the amount of bug holes and core rot we cut out of the apples, and we also probably picked up a lot of good drops. So, Instead of risking something nasty getting a foot hold in my cider we heated it to 160* to kill it all off.
Both batches will be completely different in flavor profile as the first 6 gallons was all sweet apples, and the big batch was a blend of 4 different apple varieties, 2 of which were tarts.
So, that's what's going on with me.
Thank you to every one on this site for your wealth of information! ~Bob
I am merely a novice at brewing.
My first attempts at brewing were using water kefir grains and made "proper" ginger beer. I did the research, most ginger beers are made using a mother, the mother passed down from brewer to brewer is not the true to form starter. They are the "bastard child" of kefir.... The kefir grains contain all the symbiotic yeasts and bacterias required to brew the ginger beer to original flavor.
I also did the same with apple juice. But alas, I let my grains die by letting the alcohol content get too high before racking off the grains and starting a new batch. (Only pain is you have to keep it going, and the grains multiply by half or more every batch) I had 10 gallon jugs going at one time before "pickleing" all my grains.
I made some really good cider using White Labs sweet mead yeast. Bottled it way too early and (good thing I used flip tops) became way, way, too carbonated. It usually took 15 minutes or so to open a bottle without it shooting out half of it on the floor (or ceiling)
This year I built an apple grinder and cider press. I was able to pick 6 trees worth of organic, unsprayed apples. We processed about 2000 lbs of apples. I paid all the people who helped in cider, and kept about 43 gallons out of about 200 or so gallons we pressed. We drank 3 gallons fresh, and I have one 6 gallon carboy going with the first batch of cider (White Labs English Cider Yeast WLP775), and just pitched in the lees off the first batch into 35 gallons of fresh cider.
I used 2lb brown sugar per every five gallons of cider, and 2lbs black strap molasses for the batch. I also roughly ground a container of cinnamon sticks and threw them into the batch as well.
I did pasteurize all the fresh cider, one because of the amount of bug holes and core rot we cut out of the apples, and we also probably picked up a lot of good drops. So, Instead of risking something nasty getting a foot hold in my cider we heated it to 160* to kill it all off.
Both batches will be completely different in flavor profile as the first 6 gallons was all sweet apples, and the big batch was a blend of 4 different apple varieties, 2 of which were tarts.
So, that's what's going on with me.
Thank you to every one on this site for your wealth of information! ~Bob
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