Unfortunately at this stage I don't have high hopes. I will see how it all goes but yesterday seemed to be as close to a complete brewing disaster as I've had yet.
I will not be attempting this again until I have built myself an apple press - my benchtop juicer is very inefficient at extracting juice.
Basically I cut apples into small pieces and ran them through a grape press. I then fed this into a tiny juicer, messy handful by messy handful. The apples were bruised and brown, the juice a similar colour.
The last ten kg I cut by hand and just put in the juicer. Ended up with loads of brown pulp, some unjuiced apple bits and about 7 litres of juice (5 hours later). This morning I decided to try and squeeze extra out of the pulp then thought **** it - dumped the lot in the fermenter with the wy starter and some nutrient. Hopefully as it ferments, remaining pulp will macerate and the heavy material will sink to the bottom. I'll be topping up with some extra store bought juice. Volume in the fermenter (pre store bought) sits around 25 L but how much of that will remain in juice/cider I'm not sure. I assume I'll have to siphon it out.
I gained a little hope while researching home made presses -apparently UK cidermaking often grind the apples first (leading to browning) so that part of my process may have been OK. I'll see how it ferments but I think I need to set myself up much better before attempting it again.
An industrial juicer could be the other possibility but the DIY press is probably my best option.
Yes, juicing large quantities of apples is time consuming and very inefficient.
Thankfully my juicer takes whole apples so speeds up the process but it does produce vast amounts of pulp.
What i did was let that sit for 24-48h with metabisulphite and the pulp formed a compact layer on the top. Racked the clear juice from under the 'cap' and pitched the yeast (WY4766).
Would also love a press although living in the Adelaide Hills i am surrounded by apple orchards. I buy a lot of my eating and juicing apples/pears etc direct from the growers but can also buy freshly pressed juice. I have a few contacts for cider apples but i am yet to touch base and sort out some juice although i have heard some cider brewed locally uses only pink lady apples.....
A press sounds like the go, make sure you post that up if you do build one.
Only one thing wrong with your recipe Perry, you really need 273.44g of Rice Gulls for that grain bill h34r:
3711 in a stout eh? Get ready for a dry beer :lol:
I did a Dubbel with 3711 about 6 months ago, went from 1070 right down to 1004 :unsure:
Tastes ok but man, it is waaaaaaay too dry!! I even mashed at 68*c!!
Yes, I am expecting it to be quite dry as far as the numbers show, however, from the two saisons that I have made I have found it to still have some body (stragely). I can't wait to have one of these stouts on tap - low carb - really starting to dig not having much carb in a beer - just seems to make it easier to drink, in a more enjoyable way. Haven't worked my way up to a hand pump yet though...
Cheers
Phil
And then onto a simple aussie pale
90% base
5% wheat
5% carared
1.045
Mash at 63 (too lazy to do a decoction - and I need to run out of the house a bit during the brewday)
30 IBU POR @ 60.
Going for the simple dried yeast us-05.
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