Hard Cider and other Beer news

So the hard cider is still bubbling away down in my basement.  The cooler temps have kept the fermentation a little on the slow side, but this champagne yeast is a beast even too much acid cannot keep it down.  Anyhow I hope to bottle this week or maybe the weekend, you don't want to leave too much sugar when you put it in the bottle or you will get bottle bombs (bottles that pop their caps) but I don't want to get the cider too dry again.  I'm hoping that the huge acid blend is going to keep it from being as dry as the last batch was.

Once that is done I have a double barrel plan to enact with a 3 gallon sour batch and 5 gallon pumpkin cranberry ale to work on.  If any kind of luck comes my way I may come into possession of another (or maybe a couple of) carboys to keep bottlenecks like this from happening.  Horror or horrors I had to buy beer because my kegs are empty!  The good news is New Belgium had a deal where if you buy 2 12packs you get 2 free beer glasses.  Given that I don't have any glasses of that style I thought it would be a decent trade off and I tend to like New Belgium brewing.  Don't tell anyone though I also bought some Bridgeport Hop Czar and even though it's 87IBU's and  NBB Ranger is only 70IBU's vs Hop Czar is much more drinkable for some reason.  The Hop Czar should be much more bitter than the Ranger, but it drinks better in my opinion.

Anyhow I swear I have beer stuff in the pipeline!  I bought a cooler and got a ball valve and kettle screen installed on my keggle, and did the same for my new cooler.  I need to take some pictures and get the nipple and silicon tubing so I can use them more effectively.  The only thing I have left to buy to make my little setup perfect is a hot liquor pump.  They make food grade pumps that can tolerate boiling fluids so I can pump from one vessel into the other rather than having to rely on gravity to do the work.  Until then gravity will have to do the trick.