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pr1me

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considering how well the black death scrumpy is coming along, i thought I would share the recipe.


16 liters of apple juice(preservative free)
3 litres of dark grape juice(as above)
100 - 200ml of lemon juice(berri lemon squeeze is fine)
1 bottle of blackberry or blueberry puree(available at coles and woolies)
1kg of granny smith apples
500g of red delicious or johnnies

2kg of dark brown sugar
750g pure honey
champagne yeast(grumpys sell a nice french one... oohh la la)


Standard mix applies here
wash your fruit, cut it into quarters and remove blemishes and seeds.

throw in the sugar, honey and puree with 1 litre of boiling water and stir until blended.

throw the juices in and stir some more

throw in the yeast

throw in the fruit

lock it down and swirl the fermenter so the wort swirls around inside.
Swirl it twice a day for about two minutes, i do mine once in the morning and once when i come home.
This really keeps the yeast working well, i dont want no yeasties lazing away on my time :D

2 weeks later, remove apples with tongs & rack it into the secondary. Note, definaetly use a very fine filter when you rack, there will be alot of floating sediment from the apple pulp, if you dont get rid of this as much as possible the final taste will be close to eating socks. I recommend using a normal strainer with a stocking over it to get as much as possible.

1 week after racking, rack & filter again into cubes for cold conditioning.
Cold condition for atleast 2 weeks. This really seems to clear the cider and removes any nasty manky rotting apple tastes which can arise from reminant apple pulp rotting in the brew later on.

Usually the OG should be about 1100 - 1110 and if your yeast is working right, it should level out at about 1010 - 1015 for the FG.

--------------

In my next cider brew ill be using only pure honey in the wort and adding cloves and cinnamon for a mulled taste.
 
Gees Pr1me,

I reckon 2 stubbies of that would CURE you of the black death :blink: , thats one hell of a lot of alcohol, can you still taste the apple or does the alcohol override the fruit flavors.
What does it taste like now and how long will you age this for.

it looks really interesting.
 
the alcohol doesnt seem too overpowering, and theres a definite apple/honey/fruit flavour to it, as to the ageing of this brew, after i cold condition i slap it into glas 1.5 litre wine magnums and put a stopper on it, then leave it in the fridge for serving. In this state it matures pretty slowly, usually until i've drank all 20 litres. :D.. so far that hasnt taken longer then 2 months.

I shared it out during GMK's big brew and a few people seemed to like it alot.
 
Sounds... interesting. Doesn't Berri Lemon Squeeze contain preservatives?
 
could well do, but in this case we aer using it to add acidity to the brew primarily, and in a pretty small amount compared to the rest of the brew ingredients.
 
I tried (and enjoyed) this at GMK's.

You could tell on first taste, that it was big, but it in no way lets you know it is as strong as it is. The fruit is definitely the dominating flavour. I reckon you could knock off a fair bit of it and the only way you'd know it was 12% would be when you suddenly find yourself in the gutter the next morning (or at the base of Kens destroyed steps) :)

It really was obvious that there was a blend of fruits too - so it was a much more complex than a standard cider.

Good stuff
 
i didnt break his steps... there was a faultline, geologic anomaly! an earthquake! a terrible flood! i swear to god it wasnt my fault!!! :D
 
How much do you bulk prime this with ?

btw I think you need a new nickname pr1me, I get called passion or penis fingers, cos everything I touch gets f****d....
 
I dont actually bulk prime this brew, as most of the time its still quite high in sugar after CC period. I usually get left with a low fizz cider, if you wanted though i would suggest perhaps using honey instead of sugar, i would suggest maybe 100g mixed in some boiling water. I wouldnt over do it with this brew.

Also as a couple of side notes, try to avoid using PET's with cider, it can lead to some pretty poor flavours after a month or so in storage.
And dont skip the grape juice, as this supplies needed nitrogen to the berw for the yeasties to eat, apple juice is apparently rather nitrogen starved. If you dont want to use grape juice, you can try meat(pork) and leave that in the fermenter for a long period.
 
sorry to dredge this up...but why are PET bottles a bad idea???

I'm going to put this cider down on the weekend, quite excited about it too :)

I just hope I can keep it at a good temperature, seems to be sitting on about 14 degrees in the brewroom at the moment.
 
barfridge

when you rack to the bottling bucket - use a GMK inline filter..

Much easier and better tahn astrainer and stockings.

Stockings belong on women and need to have ladders so that you can climb up to heaven...

Enough said....
 
what is this fabled GMK inline filter, and where do I get one???

I searched, and they've been mentioned, but never any specifics
 
It is very Basic and works on the KISS principle.

You buy:
- 2 clamps
- 1m of food grade 12mm tube
- 1 in-line irrigation filter with 13mm barbs.

Cut 12cm off the line and attach/clamp to in-line filter inlet and the other hose to the outlet.
The 12mm line fits snugly over the fermenter taps.
Just pour boiling water thru the filter before use - attach to fermenter tap - dangle bottom of hose at the base of the keg/bottling bucket/fermenter.
Turn on tap and you have a filter that should trap all the hop debris.
You will still yeast thru - which is good for bottle conditioning.

You can buy all this from Bunnings at around 10.00.

Hope that clears it up...
 
PET is apparently bad for cider in that in long storage it allows the cider to breathe. This happened to me with my very first batch of cider which went into long storage, but i didnt know why until i did some research. Any metal except stainless steel is bad for cider too, specially copper which any good cider will eat, even out of brass.

Now days i use glass and plastic, and when i buy another barrel, ill wood age my cider as well.
 
pr1me,
I have a basic kit cider that i bottled last year around August or September. As i was experimenting at the time and dint have glass bottles to spare i bottled in PET softdrink bottles.
I have about a dozen left and opened one the other day. Still carbonated fine. The bottles that are left are rock hard. So far it doesnt look like they have lost any gas.
anyway my 2cents worth.

GMK is there anyway of showing us a picture of the inline filter?

cheers
 
Will try and borrow the digital camera and take some pics on the weekend..
 
GMK said:
<Instructions for making GMK's Inline Filter>

Hope that clears it up...
I didn't notice the pun the first time I read this thread....

Ken.... shocking pun. :)
 
PostModern said:
GMK said:
<Instructions for making GMK's Inline Filter>

Hope that clears it up...
I didn't notice the pun the first time I read this thread....

Ken.... shocking pun. :)
Trust PoMo to filter out the Pun.... :lol:
 
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