Matthew's Journal

It's been about a month since I topped up my cider; whilst it was pretty clearly finished a couple of weeks after that, I needed a fair chunk of time free to bottle it, and today was the first opportunity.

The process took about 70 minutes, most of which was faffing with cleaning and rinsing (the bottles all need sterilising (and rinsing, which seems to take about 4 fill-empty cycles), as do the tubes, caps, funnel, etc.). The instructions suggest using "Splenda" to sweeten the final product (the sugar you add at this stage gets fermented to gently carbonate the cider, so doesn't result in final sweetness); this seemed pretty heretical to me, so I only added some to half the bottles (those with silver caps).

Syphoning wasn't too bad, as I had a racking cane (sits in the fermentation vessel, helps to stop you syphoning up crud) and a bottling stick (push-valve on the end of a rod). I was a bit worried about getting the syphon going (which involves about 1/2 filling the tubing with water before putting one end in the cider, and then opening the valve) without getting water in my cider, but it turned out not to be too tricky.

I got four litres of cider out, and then about half a pint left over; I used this to check the final gravity, and to sample the produce :)

The final gravity was 1.002, so the cider is 6.3% abv. It's a dry cider (obviously!), but without the chemical overtones that some dry ciders have. It's not the most complex brew ever, but quite moreish. I'll be interested to see how it tastes once secondary fermentation has taken place (in about 2-3 weeks)...

Last week, I started making cider. Later that evening there were signs of life, and by the next day, I definitely had some more yeasty friends:

The bubbling rate steadily increased until by Friday it was bubbling every 2-3 seconds. By today, though, that rate had slowed as more of the sugars in the apple juice got used up. Much of the slightly scummy foam had gone, too:

So, time to top up! I sterilized my funnel (and the wine thief) using boiling water, extracted a tiny amount of the proto-cider, and topped up the demi-john with some more apple juice. Fairly quickly, the rate of bubbling increased again:

I had a taste of my sneaky sample, and it wasn't bad, so I think that's a sign nothing has gone horribly wrong, yet! I also used my newly-acquired hydrometer to measure the specific gravity of the apple juice (since I had some spare!). That came to 1.049 at roughly 20 centigrade; the internet has helpful calculators that tell me that if I ferment everything out to a final gravity of 1.000, that would result in 6.5% abv, whereas if the end point is a seemingly-usual 1.010, the result will be around 5.2% abv. The final fermentation process (when the specific gravity will be stable, the cider clear, and no activity in the airlock) is likely to take another 2-3 weeks, though, so I have to be patient!

My good friend and hard-core drinking buddy K runs a blog on "country skills", and also produces some very fine home-brew. For Christmas, they gave me some brewing kit, with the promise of instructions to follow. Said instructions are online, so I thought I'd have a go.

A while ago, I took part in their bacon challenge, which resulted in a lot of pictures and some tasty bacon. I planned one big blog post at the end of that, and never quite got round to it (I still have the notes and the pictures, so may yet!), so I thought I'd write about this as I went along. Which may mean a post-of-fail in due course...

The first stage of any brewing operation is, sadly, a lot of washing up! I assembled the necessary bits, along with a bucket to sterilize the smaller pieces in:



I soaked everything in sterilising solution (mmm...chlorine!) for 15 minutes or so, then rinsed vigorously while trying not to get too much on my hands! Then the apple juice, tea, and yeasty stuff went into the demijohn, and the airlock put in the top. I have some more apple juice, which will need adding later in the process, and will (if I get a hydrometer later) enable me to estimate the starting gravity (and hence the final abv). Now the waiting begins...