Hey guys, My name's Robbie. I've been brewing for a little while now and I feel it's time to move on from my experiments, and get a little educated in the art of brewing.
So far i have done 2 different batch's of cider, a ginger beer and a wash for distilling.
I have a preference to not use additives where possible, but I could change that for floavours sake...
Due to this, both my ciders have been quite dry, which i don't mind too much, because at the point of drinking, i just add a little fresh apple juice which makes it really nice.
One common thing i have noticed with my ciders is that they both had a bit of a funny aroma. The first batch i did I used a champagne yeast that dried it out well and truly and left a bit of a smell, the next one i did i used a fruit wine yeast to try and keep a bit more of the sugars. This one had a very strong aroma and was quite undrinkable until a month in the bottle.
What is the cause of this and is the answer just to age the cider for longer?
The most recent brew i have done is a ginger beer sweetened by malt, using a lager yeast. In the later stages of fermentation i got a REALLY breaddy smell from this, so i looked up what i should do and somewhere reccomended i leave it in the fermenter for nearly a month. a few weeks in i have now tasted it and somewhat surprisingly the flavour is really sour! I can taste almost no sugar, but when i tested it with my spectrometer i got a reading of .035!!! shouldn't that still be sweet? and what caused it to go sour?
Thanks for your time guys!
So far i have done 2 different batch's of cider, a ginger beer and a wash for distilling.
I have a preference to not use additives where possible, but I could change that for floavours sake...
Due to this, both my ciders have been quite dry, which i don't mind too much, because at the point of drinking, i just add a little fresh apple juice which makes it really nice.
One common thing i have noticed with my ciders is that they both had a bit of a funny aroma. The first batch i did I used a champagne yeast that dried it out well and truly and left a bit of a smell, the next one i did i used a fruit wine yeast to try and keep a bit more of the sugars. This one had a very strong aroma and was quite undrinkable until a month in the bottle.
What is the cause of this and is the answer just to age the cider for longer?
The most recent brew i have done is a ginger beer sweetened by malt, using a lager yeast. In the later stages of fermentation i got a REALLY breaddy smell from this, so i looked up what i should do and somewhere reccomended i leave it in the fermenter for nearly a month. a few weeks in i have now tasted it and somewhat surprisingly the flavour is really sour! I can taste almost no sugar, but when i tested it with my spectrometer i got a reading of .035!!! shouldn't that still be sweet? and what caused it to go sour?
Thanks for your time guys!
