Monday, February 06, 2012

Cider's done

So I finally got around to bottling my hard cider and I ended up with 75 12oz bottles and 1 22oz bottle.  The OG was 1.066 and the FG was 1.004 for and ABV of 8.5%.  Due to my unfortunate acid blend additions early on I was afraid that I would have to throw it out, but after the champagne yeast got done the cider is a little tart less so than a Mikes Hard Lemonade or similar beverage.  I expect that this will be the best batch I've made.  The champagne yeast makes it so dry that most people think it tastes more like a sparkling wine than cider.  This way there is still some tartness that pairs well with the dryness.  Letting the yeast attenuate to 1.004 was not the plan, but I didn't think I had any star san to sanitize my bottles with and snowpocalypse messed with my local home brew store's supply chain.  Keep in mind that I didn't think I had any, I was cleaning my kitchen and hidden behind some spices was my star san, so I was in business this weekend.

This bottling marks the second time that I've had help bottling, my Dad was in town so the sanitizing, filling and capping only took about an hour and a half versus the normal 3 or 4 hours it takes me.  I decided that because the cider was still bubbling slowly when I bottled it to only had about 3/4 of a teaspoon of corn sugar.  The juice of apples has so much sugar in it already I didn't want to make bottle bombs

5 comments:

  1. Would love to try that! :)

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  2. Nice websites, thanks for sharing them with us!

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  3. That's some seriously strong cider, Mikey likey.

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  4. Never had any kind of cider

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  5. Interesting. I wish I could taste a bottle of your work.

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