If life gives you lemons, make lemonade....well life gave me a boot load of apples last week so I made apple cider. As it turned out a boot load of free apples turned into a quite costly barrel of juice. Twas an angry day in the kitchen!
Started off juicing the apples in my electric juicer thing, about 16 kilo's in that decided to break a part and render itself as land fill. Not to worry I'll check on gumtree for another one, picked a fancy looking, fitness freak approved juicer for 40 bucks. Got that back home and got back into juice mode. Two hours later and with about 20 litres of juice that one decided to break, as I reassembled it for the umpteenth time after cleaning.
Much swearing later I had just enough juice to make a batch in my fermenter. So I chucked some pectic enzyme and some campden in it and left it till the next day.
Added 2 litres of shop juice to bring it up to 23 ish litres, put about a teaspoon of malic acid in and a cup of tea made from 5 tea bags. I still haven't got to the brew shop to buy some tannin, so went old school tea bag method. Then gave a pack of Safcider yeast a kickstart in a cup while a put some nutrient in the keg and gave the contents a quick oxygenation session with a big spoon, took a gravity reading; 1.050 at 18c, no extra sugar required. Then dumped the yeasties in the mix, screwed the lid on and set the heater.
Its currently plopping away at 18c, smells like cider, and I guess time will tell how it tastes. The apples were a mix of golden and red delicious, about 8kg of them and the remainder looked like little sundowners or something, no name was on the bags. Bit of luck and a fair breeze and she'll turn out like every cider before it.
I'll be interested to see what if any difference the amount of malic and tannin will make on the end product. But suffice to say I wont be juicing any more apples till I've made/purchased a scratter and a press, Wont be wasting anymore money on juicers that cant handle a bit of a work out, too much angry in the kitchen!
Started off juicing the apples in my electric juicer thing, about 16 kilo's in that decided to break a part and render itself as land fill. Not to worry I'll check on gumtree for another one, picked a fancy looking, fitness freak approved juicer for 40 bucks. Got that back home and got back into juice mode. Two hours later and with about 20 litres of juice that one decided to break, as I reassembled it for the umpteenth time after cleaning.
Much swearing later I had just enough juice to make a batch in my fermenter. So I chucked some pectic enzyme and some campden in it and left it till the next day.
Added 2 litres of shop juice to bring it up to 23 ish litres, put about a teaspoon of malic acid in and a cup of tea made from 5 tea bags. I still haven't got to the brew shop to buy some tannin, so went old school tea bag method. Then gave a pack of Safcider yeast a kickstart in a cup while a put some nutrient in the keg and gave the contents a quick oxygenation session with a big spoon, took a gravity reading; 1.050 at 18c, no extra sugar required. Then dumped the yeasties in the mix, screwed the lid on and set the heater.
Its currently plopping away at 18c, smells like cider, and I guess time will tell how it tastes. The apples were a mix of golden and red delicious, about 8kg of them and the remainder looked like little sundowners or something, no name was on the bags. Bit of luck and a fair breeze and she'll turn out like every cider before it.
I'll be interested to see what if any difference the amount of malic and tannin will make on the end product. But suffice to say I wont be juicing any more apples till I've made/purchased a scratter and a press, Wont be wasting anymore money on juicers that cant handle a bit of a work out, too much angry in the kitchen!
