Turbo Cider

Quite excited about brewing in general has lead me to have a go at something which will be ready to drink a little sooner...

07th July 2012

Ingredients

• 5L 100% Pressed Apple Juice (Aldi Rio Dora)
• 150g Dark Sugar
• 2 tsp Allspice
• Black tea (2 tea bags steeped for 10 mins)
• Bakers yeast - 1 teaspoons

Preparation

• Brewed tea for 10 mins
• Heated a small amount of juice to dissolve sugar and spices.
• Added solution to container with juice to make 4.5L total
• Measured original gravity 1.054
• Shook for 5 mins to aerate
• Setup blow-off tube, seal and secondary vessel
• Pitched yeast

Due to limited fermenting equipment I am brewing this in a 5l water bottle. I have constructed an airlock from siphon tubing and a bottle with water in it. This will act as an overflow if this really takes off!

All indications from other peoples attempts are that this should come out at about 6-7% ABV. Tasting the sample used for measuring the OG, it was just about the right mix of flavors.

08th June 2012

I was initially concerned that the yeast was very slow to start, as I had only pitched half the normal amount. This was because it was clear from other recipes I was over-pitching my yeast.

However fermentation started and there is a good foam building. The ad hoc airlock/blow off tubing is working fine and the headroom is proving sufficient.

Now we wait...

10th July 2012

Interestingly the brew has lost all its foam, which was looking quite unsightly and was causing mild panic. Plenty of activity, and since covering it with a blanket, it has picked up nicely.

15th July 2012

Fermentation appears to have slowed and there is a lot less activity.

26th July 2012

Racked the cider to a new demijohn, and measured the specific gravity and tasted.

Specific Gravity 1.000. Tasted like cider (which is reassuruing). Could taste the dark sugar and spices. Definite fizziness with a surprisingly bitter aftertaste. Mixing the sample with sugar corrected that bitterness.

28th July 2012

Stabilised the Cider in preparation for sweetening with sugar later in the week.

31st July 2012

Sweetened with some sugar and another litre of apple juice to bring it up to a nice rounded flavour. I suspect because of the baking yeast it had developed a bitter flavour.

The bottling went rather well with 16 284ml bottles capped. Used my grandfathers hand bottle capper which was effective but noisey and not suitable for evening brewing once baby is asleep.

03rd August 2012

Now onto labelling the bottles. As my first attempt at labelling it was a very interesting design exercise, with the most promising label as this one.

Sadly my printer wasn't up to the task and so I'll use a laser jet next time round. Still, the cider is labelled and looks more presentable.

I'm happy to call that one done.

A tale of two ciders

Some friends of mine have some apples on their tree so I suggested having a go at making some cider for them. As a backup I have also put on a turbo cider to make sure there is something to drink!

18th August 2012

Picked a bucket of apples from said apple tree. The apples were fairly bitter in taste and sharp rather than sweet. Not sure what that means for the resultant cider but we will see.

Processing them was fairly time consuming. Using the food processor to bash them up and then using a muslin to wring out the fluid that couldn't be strained out.

In the end, the measuring somewhat inaccurately we produced about 2L of Apple juice.

Next time I do this I would definitely want to build some sort of home made fruit press as we didn't get all that much juice out and it was a lot of effort for the juice we did get.

I put in a whole campden tablet to the juice to ensure it was thoroughly sterilised before I add the yeast.

20th August 2012

Now adding the yeast, and starting a second Turbo Cider just in case the first one doesn't work out.

Yeast was added 2/3rds to the turbo cider, 1/3 to the real juice cider.

Ingredients

• 4 litres of Apple juice (from concentrate)
• Youngs Cider Yeast

Original Gravity: 1.042

Yep, it is a pretty basic cider recipe. I could have added extra sugar but I didn't feel want to make something too strong for a refreshing summery drink.

21st August 2012

The Turbo Cider as expected has started nicely and has developed a good foam. The real juice cider doesn't appear to be doing very much at the moment.

22nd August 2012

The real juice cider had definitely not started fermenting. There was no visible activity (bubbles, foam, airlock activity) so I decided to repitch some yeast. This time I made a starter of bakers yeast with sugary water.

Later that evening there was more activity from the airlock and slight bubbley patches forming on the surface.

23rd August 2012

The real juice cider is now most definitely fermenting with lots of activity. Excellent, now we wait.

20th August 2012

Fermentation appears to have stopped for both ciders. I will give them both two weeks to mature and then bottle.

05th September 2012

Found some time to get this bottled. Tasted the turbo cider which was close to drinkable, a good cider flavour with a bit of zingyness which I figure will settle down once the cider has more time to mature.

No final gravity so ABV estimated at 6%

The real apple juice however fared less well. On tasting it, bitter, sharp and left a very sour taste in the mouth. Undrinkably sour... I suspect that is an infected batch or that the apples were not suitable for making cider with. Down the sink with ye foul smelling brew!

So, with that established I got the turbo cider primed with 40g of sugar and bottled ready for labelling.

19th September 2012

For the label design I decided on something humorously classic for what is a very simple cider.

I've decided to include a QR Code which links to this page as a nice link between what you are drinking and how it was made.

20th September 2012

Bottled and ready to drink.