Wildberry Cider

[Sudsyone]

Only been brewing for a couple years dipping into my first batch of cider last year. Have a couple recipes brewing now from the recipe section and got bored so decided to go out on a limb here. What do you all think.

Primary:
-1 gallon Big Y (local market) AJ
-1 can TM Wildberry Concentrate
-1 cup brown sugar
-1/2 a lemon
-1 tsp yeast nutrient
-1 tsp safale s-04 of course


1. Poor 1/2 cup AJ into pot
2. Squeeze a half lemon into pot
3. Add 1 cup brown sugar

Boil for 5 minutes then cool to room temp.


4. Poor room temp Wildberry concentrate into fermenter of your choice ( I choose a Carlo Rossi bottle and use a cap style with an S shaped airlock)
5. Poor in rest of AJ and boiled mixture into fermenter
6. Add 1 tsp yeast nutrient
7. Shake vigorously to oxygenate without smashing your fermenter on the ground. Best to make sure your hands and fermenter are dry and use caution.
8. Add in 1 tsp safale-04 yeast and give it a slight swirl to settle
9. Install airlock of your choice and store at room temp. (mine is 65-68 and has to be child proof sort of).

I'm looking for this to go completely dry for alcohol content and may or may not rack to secondary pending clarity, then back sweeten with another can of Wildberry concentrate. This will be carbed using 12 oz. capped bottles and using a 16 oz. plastic bottle for reference.




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[Descender]

I think you're going to have clarity issues because you boiled the aj. Pectin...

 

[Sudsyone]

Thanks Descender, should have boiled in water instead. A little aging then will be the tix...


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[heliummuppet]

Did you use a lemon or lime? You wrote both. What is the point of the citrus? Flavor? Also, do you really need to boil it? Cant you just shake it in the cider?

 

[Sudsyone]

Haha, good catch, I used a half lemon for flavoring. You could also use a couple limes. I boiled it to alleviate any possibilities of infection.


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[Sudsyone]

Its been almost 24hrs and thought this should take off like crazy, but no airlock activity at all. Looking at the ingredients on concentrate, it doesn't look like anything would inhibit the yeast. Am I wrong??



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[Sudsyone]

Well, woke up this am and finally got activity every second. I wonder why this took so long to take off as my others with same safale-04 were within 24hrs, hmmm... Would this be the case for higher SG batches. For example, my others had a SG of 1.050 and as much as 1.060 and took off pretty quick. This one at 1.078 took 36hrs to activate.

Edit: Well, a little research went a long way... Found that the higher starting gravity yields a slower start to the fermentation process as it takes longer for the yeast to respirate or get ready to start working. Also, since I didn't prepare a starter for this higher ABV, the yeast will also take longer to activate. I did last night shake the jug a bit before bed, so maybe it woke up the little buggers. Either way, we are off and running...

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