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A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says to the horse "Why the long face?" The horse says "I'm a Port Adelaide Power supporter." The bartender reaches under the bar, pulls out a .22 and shoots the horse dead. One of the barflies turns to the bartender and says "What did you do that for?"...

Good news! It kicked off, and now the fermenter is bubbling away merrily.

I bought a pouch of Mangrove Jack ginger beer on the way to work and left it in the car. Probably got a bit hot. Have I killed the dry yeast in the sachet attached to the bottom of the pouch? - Todd.

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You can get most anything you need from the big hardware chain with the hammer logo. They sell 25l water storage cubes that you can stick a tap in to make a decent fermentation chamber. You'll need a cheap plastic bucket with volume markings so you know how much you're putting in the cube. You...

Just looking for clarification. For an alcoholic brew you add sugar during fermentation, then a small amount of sugar during bottling for carbonation. For a non alcoholic brew you don't add any sugar during the mix, only the priming sugar when bottling. I note you've written: It is...

First results: Apologies if subjective 3 bottles of apple cider, Fermented with Ale Yeast and conditioned in Grolsch swing top bottles (475ml I believe). One bottle left alone, one with 1/2 teaspoon of the splenda stevia and one with 1 teaspoon of the same. Both backsweetened bottles...

Can you enlighten us as to ratio of stevia/L you added? I'm interested to see whether your backsweetening ratio is close to mine.

The difference between a soft drink and a hard drink is the fermentation time. With a soft drink you're essentially starting the fermentation process in the bottle, then cutting it short with refrigeration or pasteurisation when the level of carbonation is correct. With a hard drink you're...

But wouldn't that be balanced out by the fact that a lower initial yeast introduction would take longer to use up the available oxygen, and will be reproducing all the while? It doesn't make a lot of sense, since there are still cider fermenters out there who will allow wild yeasts to colonise...

If you're really desperate for bottles you can re-use suitably cleaned soft drink bottles. They're also designed to hold pressure. I think the reason people argue against screw top bottles is the inherent weakness in the bottle introduced by embedding a screw into the neck.

I used similar swing top bottles from a few local variety shops for apple cider. They just couldn't hold a decent carbonation. The mechanism is designed to seal the bottle, but not keep pressure in. They'd be ideal for a fruit wine or still cider though, so I kept them. Compare the...

It shouldn't make a difference in the long run, it'll just take a bit longer for the fermentation to finish due to the initial introduction of yeast being less. Yeast multiply during fermentation until all the available sugars are consumed. Because less yeast was introduced initially it will...

At the bottom of every post is a "quote" button. Click on that, and it'll open up a new reply for the thread with the previous post quoted.

I was aiming at a higher carbed end result than my previous batches. I aimed before for a 2.0 CO2 level, this time I was aiming for 4.5. To get a 4.5 CO2 level at the current temp the required cane/table suger was almost 15g/L. I under-primed deliberately because the stevia/maltodextrin blend is...

I've yet to try adding stevia to the fermenter myself, only when bottling, but the instructions in the ginger beer kit I picked up from the hbs includes stevia for backsweetening, and it's meant to be added at the same time as the yeast. That being said, it's pure stevia vs whatever mix or blend...

You might end up with the worst of all of them. I'm experimenting with Stevia because I want my brews to be enjoyed by everyone, even the lactose intolerant. I'm no expert, but I believe that lactose is the preferred method of backsweetening because it's a natural sugar that's unfermentable...

*Update. Combining multiple experiments. I've had 4 batches of 3L ciders fermenting since Aug 21 consisting of Apple with Bakers yeast, Apple with Champagne yeast, Apple with Ale yeast and Apple Blackcurrant with Ale yeast. Each batch was racked into 5 475ml Grolsch swingtop bottles, bulk...

I use the following website/calculator: http://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/ (apologies if linking is a no-no). I like my ciders much fizzier than my beers, so I look around 4.0-4.5 volumes of CO2 as a final result. The calculator above gives you a residual CO2 reading based...

Well, I screwed up. Rather than bookmarking a priming sugar calculator, I relied on my brewing notebook. Big mistake, 'cause my handwriting is terrible. Long story short, I over primed the entire 18L batch of cider and had to toss the whole thing rather than risk bottle bombs. On the...