New to any form of brewing but have decided to start with a cider.
English, but living in Mexico - "proper" cider is pretty difficult to come by (Strongbow is not proper cider!!)
It's not easy as am living on a Marine research station in the middle of the jungle, on the beach, with not a lot in the way of power. Have managed to get some started, by getting people to bring me stuff out from the UK and smuggle it through customs..I think infection is going to be my biggest worry as there is a LOT of damp and fungus floating about.
Got the guys on the weekly shopping run to pick me up 7 gallons of 'Organic' cider and a bushel of mixed Gala/Granny smith type apples (all that was available)...
Using a blender, food mill and old t-shirts managed to get about 2.5 gallons of juice out of the apples. Have made Airlocks out of old peanut butter jars and some O2 mask tubing that we had lying about all sealed with Super glue and Marine silicon, filled with medical alcohol...not pretty, but functional.
The s/g of the organic juice was 1.077, adding the pressed juice brought the s/g down and I added about 1 kg of "piloncillo" (which as far as I can make out is a Mexican raw cane sugar block)...this resulted in a combined juice with a s/g of 1.066.
Split the mixture between two 20ltr plastic water bottles which look identical to the "better bottles" in the photo at the start of the Ed's Apfelwein post. Added 1x 5ml spoonful of Sodium metabisulphate to each 5 gallons (my calculations lead me to believe this is equivalent to 2 Campden tablets per gallon as the juice was fairly insipid in taste (I don't have a way to measure the pH)). The juice was really dark brown at this point...like really dark. I'm not sure if this is normal or if I took too long getting it all pressed and mixed up.
Left the juice overnight and saw no evidence of fermentation, was kinda happy that there was no immediate infection, but I was a bit worried that the 'organic' cider was less than organic even though there were no preservatives listed and that the juice had turned brown in the bottle after opening (I figured this meant it probably didn't have any preservatives in)..
I added Pectinase to one bottle the following morning and DAP to both about 6 hours later. I added 1 tspoon pectinase per gallon and just less than 2 tspoons of DAP to each. I'd read it was possible to end up with Ammonium flavours/odours if you added too much DAP so erred a little under what it said on the tub...
About 6 hours after that I added 5g of E-118 Champagne yeast to both bottles. Homemade airlocks on and then into the coolest area I can find (about 21C = 69F in the middle of the day) We're in the middle of a cold snap here..I hope it continues and doesn't get much hotter.
The following morning (about 12 hours later) and there is a slight amount of bubbles around the edge of the bottle but not much else, no bubbling from Airlock. about 4 hours after that and it's starting to go a bit crazy...I've got nearly an inch of foam on the top, bright white around the edges and brown on top.
Interestingly the bottle with no pectinase has a much paler brown foam than the juice with the pectinase. Is this normal?
As I write this fermentation is increasing I'm upto just under one bubble a second in both airlocks.
The plan is to make one clear, sparkling cider and one cloudy, still cider, they're hopefully both going to be dry as sweet cider isn't my favourite, also I have no refrigeration so cold crashing isn't going to be an option......fingers crossed...if anybody reads this and spots a glaring error please let me know..
I'll let you know how it turns out, hopefully it won't explode into a giant cloud of drunk mosquitos at some point...
English, but living in Mexico - "proper" cider is pretty difficult to come by (Strongbow is not proper cider!!)
It's not easy as am living on a Marine research station in the middle of the jungle, on the beach, with not a lot in the way of power. Have managed to get some started, by getting people to bring me stuff out from the UK and smuggle it through customs..I think infection is going to be my biggest worry as there is a LOT of damp and fungus floating about.
Got the guys on the weekly shopping run to pick me up 7 gallons of 'Organic' cider and a bushel of mixed Gala/Granny smith type apples (all that was available)...
Using a blender, food mill and old t-shirts managed to get about 2.5 gallons of juice out of the apples. Have made Airlocks out of old peanut butter jars and some O2 mask tubing that we had lying about all sealed with Super glue and Marine silicon, filled with medical alcohol...not pretty, but functional.
The s/g of the organic juice was 1.077, adding the pressed juice brought the s/g down and I added about 1 kg of "piloncillo" (which as far as I can make out is a Mexican raw cane sugar block)...this resulted in a combined juice with a s/g of 1.066.
Split the mixture between two 20ltr plastic water bottles which look identical to the "better bottles" in the photo at the start of the Ed's Apfelwein post. Added 1x 5ml spoonful of Sodium metabisulphate to each 5 gallons (my calculations lead me to believe this is equivalent to 2 Campden tablets per gallon as the juice was fairly insipid in taste (I don't have a way to measure the pH)). The juice was really dark brown at this point...like really dark. I'm not sure if this is normal or if I took too long getting it all pressed and mixed up.
Left the juice overnight and saw no evidence of fermentation, was kinda happy that there was no immediate infection, but I was a bit worried that the 'organic' cider was less than organic even though there were no preservatives listed and that the juice had turned brown in the bottle after opening (I figured this meant it probably didn't have any preservatives in)..
I added Pectinase to one bottle the following morning and DAP to both about 6 hours later. I added 1 tspoon pectinase per gallon and just less than 2 tspoons of DAP to each. I'd read it was possible to end up with Ammonium flavours/odours if you added too much DAP so erred a little under what it said on the tub...
About 6 hours after that I added 5g of E-118 Champagne yeast to both bottles. Homemade airlocks on and then into the coolest area I can find (about 21C = 69F in the middle of the day) We're in the middle of a cold snap here..I hope it continues and doesn't get much hotter.
The following morning (about 12 hours later) and there is a slight amount of bubbles around the edge of the bottle but not much else, no bubbling from Airlock. about 4 hours after that and it's starting to go a bit crazy...I've got nearly an inch of foam on the top, bright white around the edges and brown on top.
Interestingly the bottle with no pectinase has a much paler brown foam than the juice with the pectinase. Is this normal?
As I write this fermentation is increasing I'm upto just under one bubble a second in both airlocks.
The plan is to make one clear, sparkling cider and one cloudy, still cider, they're hopefully both going to be dry as sweet cider isn't my favourite, also I have no refrigeration so cold crashing isn't going to be an option......fingers crossed...if anybody reads this and spots a glaring error please let me know..
I'll let you know how it turns out, hopefully it won't explode into a giant cloud of drunk mosquitos at some point...
