Holy ?!?!! is Notty a well behaved little yeastie!

[Panik]

Been doing a little bit of experimenting with the whole graf, apple wine and Graham's English cider ideas:

4 gallons Publix organic aple juice
1.5 lb unprocessed local orange blossom honey
1.5 lb amber lme
juice of 3 lemons
Lipton sun tea cold steeped in 1.5L of Martinelli's

OG was 1.072 on 2/21
SG was 1.024 on 2/24 pm
Started cold crashing @ ~10F this am (assumed SG was <1.020)

I would have gotten another SG reading before cold crashing but didnt have time before taking the kiddo to school - priorities and all that fun jazz!

In any case the brew has been cold crashing for about 2.5hrs and there is already a very clear delineation between the top 2-3" of brew from which yeast has settled and the remaining yeast suspension. Having read CvilleKevin's threads I figured I would try cold crashing to retain residual sweetness but I didn't think that Notty would behave this well!

Its going to be interesting to see how this turns out. I am a little worried about the extremely rapid fermentation time (occured around 70-74F) but taste tests were pretty good. If this turns out I may experiment with dry hopping, and will definately back off on the honey on the next batch.

 

[Panik]

Well a quick update.... Cold crashing has been going well. Just racked off the lees yesterday and the gravity was 1.019. Taste test was great! There were no off flavors, no off odors or anything!

Does anyone have any experience trying to cold crash and stabilize at this gravity? I'm, hoping that once I take this batch out of the fridge it will maintain between 1.019 and about 1.015.

I don't know the particular science behind it, but the combination of malt and honey definately preserves/maintains some the apple flavor that most people might typically desire out of a cider beverage.

Being a noob I do have a final question. I purchased a couple of ounces of Cascade hops based on the description of it having citrus like notes. I was planning on possibly doing a slight dry hop to compliment the orange blossum honey component of the cider. Any thoughts as to whether using Cascades would be a good idea or if there might be some better hops that would meld better?