I spent today washing a load of bottles (500ml) and i sanitised 10 of them. I also sanitised my 3 5L mini-kegs and left them drying. While the power went out from 14:00 to about 19:30 or so, I spent that time in the dark until I lit a load of candles. I played my Nintendo DS and ordered Chinese from the next town which was not affected by the power cuts all around the country.
Eventually I siphoned my fermenter into my sanitised bottling bucket while I boiled some water and sugar (glucose brewing sugar) to prime it. Now tasting the cider at this stage, it tastes like very cheap and watery cider. I'm not sure if conditioning will improve on this but we shall see. It is also not clear, in the image it almost looks like orange juice. I believe when i move to a cool place that it should clear eventually.
Im not sure about the mini-kegs. I get very mixed reviews and the one thing im worried about now is that the priming solution contains too much sugar for the minikegs to handle? I have them down on a towel just in case.
As it turns out though, the bottle capper i got is very simple to use and very quick. I might go all bottle next time however it is an infinite pain in the ass to wash them all so i need to make sure i wash as i use.
My FG seems a little off too. It looks to be about 1.005. The instructions said when it reaches .998 or below then its done. From a bit more reading it seems that contrary to the instructions time of 7 days fermenting, Cider can take weeks or months to ferment properly and it should have been pretty much clear when i siphoned to the bottling bucket.
So i have a sneaking suspicion that this is another batch that will not work out, although its much more successful than the last one. As long my kegs do not explode then I should have something that i can at least drink.
I will hold off on making another batch for now, I want to see how this turns out and also make some decisions about either getting more bottles or go the Cornelius keg route. The only problem with the cornelius is chilling it as its too big for my fridge.
I am assuming that the cider that takes weeks or months to be ready is the traditionally made stuff rather than from a kit. Still, give it a month or so to age and then see how it has gone. Reading this made me think of curry chips - can't imagine why.
ReplyDeleteDamn it now im thinking of Curry chips :D
ReplyDeleteAs it stands i brought a slice of frozen (cooked last night) Fajita pizza to work for lunch.
Oh and on the bright side, i know co2 is building as one of the kegs had a small dent in it but there are no trace of any dents now so co2 is certainly building up so its at least looking good for carbonation as long as nothing kerplodes.
ReplyDelete