Recent content by chunkychicken

I've racked off and added gelatin to try to stop fermentation, I'll be cold crashing one 5L carboy at a time and racking off a 2nd time. I'll monitor for further activity, hopefully there'll still be trace amounts of yeast still present to aid with carbonation.

Yeah the secondary fermentation still keeps going, but I'll likely kill it off before it gets to 100% and stick with it somewhere in the 75-80 percent range, retain the flavour and a hint of dryness. Swmbo isn't a fan of dry, she'll go semi-dry, but not if it's flavourless. I'll look at some way...

I'll be transferring 10L to carboys tomorrow to do some experimentation with, the remaining liquid will end up in a carboy for drinking. It's pretty much done, there's no additional pressure from fermentation.

I don't have any fermenting sugar, it's just about impossible to get some at the moment anyway. I have dextrose and lactose, but I'd rather avoid using them

So, I recently bought a Fermentasaurus Snub Nose to start brewing cider and beer with. Having done barrel brews, carboy brews and shake brews (shake that bottle for me, shake that bottle for me, come on now!), changing to pressure was something different. I'm not going to pretend I know anything...

http://sidewood.com.au/ So on the weekend I was traveling with swmbo and on our winery tour we finished at Sidewood. They made a superb apple and pear cider, using local crushed apples, and surprisingly, 90% pear juice in their pear cider. The apples they use are local Fuji & Pink Lady...

Diluting: I should have bought more apple juice, but in the end, I didn't even need to dilute it, should have let it have a bit of space. The fermentation barrel, one of those plastic jobs, didn't really appear to be air tight, whether or not it was the grommit, the lid, or otherwise, since it...

Love to here what some of the regulars around here think of the basic/starter recipe/base and what they've done to flavour it. I want to do a spiced apple with cloves, cinnamon and vanilla, but each time it's been way too much on the cloves side, with little hint of cinnamon and vanilla. I'm...

Had some of this the other night, about 5 weeks into fermentation. Subtle sweetness with a hint of dryness, really quite nice. SWMBO loved it, so I must be doing something right.

Working on 8 gallons now 277.5

Pictures from last nights racking

Ok, so 1 month in, so far so good. Gravity reads 1008, which gives an ABV of 6.3% A small hint of dryness, a small hint of tartness, a little 'thin' for my liking, but overall, has all the hall marks of a decent pub cider, so looks to be a good starter recipe. There's still quite a bit of...

Caramel sauce: http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/caramel-sauce/2d4284f9-821a-4013-99e4-689008ceb836 The key is to dissolve the sugar at a low temperate first before cranking the heat, otherwise you'll have crystalized sugar in your brew and you're right, it won't taste very good, and it'll be...

So in my infinite wisdom, and wealth of brewing knowledge and experience, I decided to step up from my 1.5gal carboy brews and break out the 30 lt/8 gal brew. Store bought apple juice, 27lt Store bought water, 4lt S08 yeast 1-1.5tsp of tartaric acid 1-1.5tsp of malic acid 0.5 tsp of...

I used Lactose recently to back sweeten a brew that had strawberries and lime. It was really nice but it was also quite tart. Lactose cut through the tartness and balanced the flavours out, masked the subtle, jam-like flavour a little bit, but overall it balanced it out to a point where it was...