Been reading a fair bit about cider and scrumpy and have decided today is "D" day for "Ben's Berry Nice Cider". Early crow on the nice cider I know - it'll probably taste like shit.
I'm looking to stay simple and have taken the advice of various members and bought 20l of Aldi juice. It's all apple except two, 2L bottles - one cranberry "juice" and one apple and blackcurrant juice. The cranberry is a drink made from concentrate. All have no preservatives.
The vessels are two Bunnings cubes of 15 l capacity each and I'll be putting 10l in each. They fit snugly into one of my eskies (chilly bin / cooler - whatever) so I can keep the temp hovering around 18 degrees. On the topic of the vessel, I can't easily fit an airlock so I'm thinking of using a trick I employed on a fermenter when the grommet pushed into the brew whereby I simply sticky taped over the hole and pit a pin hole in it. That'll be Ok if the cider doesn't throw a massive krausen in which case I'll have to jury rig an improvised overflow hose. I think I will prepare the overflow hoses in advance. Anyone used micro-irrigation hose for this purpose before? I have some already. I hope it doesn't block up with krud. Would it be too rough and ready to leave the lids on the jerries cracked open slightly and let the shit come out of there? I could spray with starsan every now and then.... I know it hasn't happened yet and I'm already cutting corners....
The yeast is leftover Coopers ale yeast from kits that I have kick started overnight in a weak sugar solution.I'm not using any nutrient as I won't be sorry if it does not ferment out fully. Indeed I will probably bottle early with carbonation drops and throw the whole lot in the fridge as soon as an appropriate carbonation level has been reached.
So as you can see , I'm not aiming for anything complex , just some alcoholic apple juice that'll take the edge off at the end of a hot day, that an uneducated palate can enjoy.
My last cider was a Morgans(?) kit in the squishy bag that was a recommended as a Magners clone. It went like hot-cakes amongst our friends but I thought it far too sweet and would recommend that the "apple cider flavour" not be included as it is really just a sachet of chemicals to boost the sweetness.
Having said that I would not rule out sweetening with Stevia if I could source something a little more natural than Potassium whatever it was in the sachet... Back sweetening will be a something I'll resort to if I mis-time something and it's too dry to swill.
Also plan to sanitise some of the old bottles and bottle some of my jungle juice as a scrumpy. If needed I can carbonate in the soda-stream as I don't do kegs. Incidentally I just scored two kegs from my scrap-metal man. Happy days. Just have to decide on what to do with them. Keg or BIAB?