Hello all,
Batch number 2 is bottled and I definitely made some mistakes and learned some good lessons with that batch.
That said, I'm prepping for batch number 3 which will go into my family's home-made Christmas baskets that we give out as gifts. I'm moving from 1 gallon batches to my first 5 gallon in a plastic carboy I bought off a friend.
So, my most pressing question is what kind of yeast I should use.
For the last batch I did, it was a gallon and I used the pre-packaged yeast that came in my kit that I got as a gift. I contacted them and they said the yeast was “Fruity Ale Yeast” Fermentis Safale S-04 - Saccharomyces. The yeast on my last batch was pretty slow. My kit calls for 10 days to ferment, but I waited like 20 days or so and things seemed to stop at around 1.02.
Now my basement stays about 70 degrees on the money. I have a new AC unit so I'm not sure how the temp is going to be as we get into October through November. I noticed that the yeast I used previously wanted a bit cooler temperature, so I'm not sure if the 70 degrees stunted the yeast growth or it was something else.
So, given that following criteria what kind of yeast do you all recommend?
1. I'm still new to homebrewing
2. My basement stays at 70F currently
3. I plan on priming after primary and adding extra sugar so that I can pasteurize and have carbonated and semi-sweet cider.
Another semi non-related question, I made a sugar priming liquid for my carbonation and added it to my secondary carboy. There was still a lot of lees on the bottom and I realized that I had to stir which made the lees kick back up. How do you combat this? I figured I could rack to a bucket for bottling, but aren't you supposed to try to limit expose to oxygen at this point?
Also, some things I learned:
I used frozen juice from a local orchard (unpasteurized no sulfates). In retrospect, I suppose I should have used camden tablets to kill anything in it before I pitched, at least I think?
I racked out of primary before taking a hydrometer reading.... it was like day 15 and the instructions said to ferment for 10 days. After getting it into the secondary container, I took a reading and was shocked that it was 1.02. I deiced I will buy a wine thief (I think that will make reading much easier) and taking them more often to gauge progress. As a result of racking early, it seemed to slow fermentation down significantly.
Anywho, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!
Batch number 2 is bottled and I definitely made some mistakes and learned some good lessons with that batch.
That said, I'm prepping for batch number 3 which will go into my family's home-made Christmas baskets that we give out as gifts. I'm moving from 1 gallon batches to my first 5 gallon in a plastic carboy I bought off a friend.
So, my most pressing question is what kind of yeast I should use.
For the last batch I did, it was a gallon and I used the pre-packaged yeast that came in my kit that I got as a gift. I contacted them and they said the yeast was “Fruity Ale Yeast” Fermentis Safale S-04 - Saccharomyces. The yeast on my last batch was pretty slow. My kit calls for 10 days to ferment, but I waited like 20 days or so and things seemed to stop at around 1.02.
Now my basement stays about 70 degrees on the money. I have a new AC unit so I'm not sure how the temp is going to be as we get into October through November. I noticed that the yeast I used previously wanted a bit cooler temperature, so I'm not sure if the 70 degrees stunted the yeast growth or it was something else.
So, given that following criteria what kind of yeast do you all recommend?
1. I'm still new to homebrewing
2. My basement stays at 70F currently
3. I plan on priming after primary and adding extra sugar so that I can pasteurize and have carbonated and semi-sweet cider.
Another semi non-related question, I made a sugar priming liquid for my carbonation and added it to my secondary carboy. There was still a lot of lees on the bottom and I realized that I had to stir which made the lees kick back up. How do you combat this? I figured I could rack to a bucket for bottling, but aren't you supposed to try to limit expose to oxygen at this point?
Also, some things I learned:
I used frozen juice from a local orchard (unpasteurized no sulfates). In retrospect, I suppose I should have used camden tablets to kill anything in it before I pitched, at least I think?
I racked out of primary before taking a hydrometer reading.... it was like day 15 and the instructions said to ferment for 10 days. After getting it into the secondary container, I took a reading and was shocked that it was 1.02. I deiced I will buy a wine thief (I think that will make reading much easier) and taking them more often to gauge progress. As a result of racking early, it seemed to slow fermentation down significantly.
Anywho, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!