This is my first post, but I've been reading these forums quite a bit... Thanks to all of you for your collective wealth of knowledge. The information I've found here has been invaluable. I feel like I completely know what I'm doing, even though I'm completely new at this...
My first batch:
Sorry for the poor quality, this was taken with my cell phone, and the lens is all scratched up.
I started with five gallons of fresh, unpasteurized cider from a local orchard in CT. I didn't realize until I got it home, but it says on the jugs that this batch is 5-10% pears. I'm interested to see if that adds anything to the final flavor. Right now the cider is very sweet with a strong apple flavor up front, but after a second or two you can detect a little bit of the pear. It's only slightly tart on the tongue, and finishes with a slight hint of lemon. Now that is probably wayyyy too much analysis for cider, but I'm interested to see if any of those qualities carry over into the final product. From what I've gathered by reading these forums, as well as my own experience drinking cider, I'm not expecting that it will. But it's better to be thorough, I guess.
I mixed the must in a bucket with 1 vial of White Labs 'English Cider Yeast' and 5 tsp. of LD Carlson yeast nutrient. Stirred it up well, then poured it into a five gallon carboy and I'm now patiently waiting....
I measured the specific gravity at somewhere between 1.050 and 1.051. I couldn't find a thermometer, and the cider might have been a little cold, so maybe it's really 1.049... I'm going to just call it 1.050 and worst case scenario I'll only be off by only about two tenths of a percent when I calculate ABV. Does that make sense?
I'm planning on letting it ferment all the way down to 1.000 or below. I've seen that it's common to get it all the way down to 0.990. The lower the better as far as I'm concerned. I like everything dry. Then I'll rack it to a clean carboy to let it age in 'secondary' (can you even call it a secondary fermentation if it's not fermenting any more?). I'll leave it for as long as I can, but this is my first batch, so I'm very excited. I don't know how long I'll be able to last before I feel compelled to bottle it up to drink and share.
Everything went extremely smoothly thanks to all that I was able to garner from reading this site and others. Only thing I felt was less than ideal was when to of the plastic rings from the caps on the cider jugs fell into the bucket as I was mixing. I guess that could be a possible contamination? Also, I didn't give the cider of the yeast very much time at all to warm up before I pitched. Hopefully that wasn't a mistake.
Anyway, Thanks again everyone for your help! I'll be updating as I go. If anyone has some tips for beginners, I'm all ears!
My first batch:
Sorry for the poor quality, this was taken with my cell phone, and the lens is all scratched up.
I started with five gallons of fresh, unpasteurized cider from a local orchard in CT. I didn't realize until I got it home, but it says on the jugs that this batch is 5-10% pears. I'm interested to see if that adds anything to the final flavor. Right now the cider is very sweet with a strong apple flavor up front, but after a second or two you can detect a little bit of the pear. It's only slightly tart on the tongue, and finishes with a slight hint of lemon. Now that is probably wayyyy too much analysis for cider, but I'm interested to see if any of those qualities carry over into the final product. From what I've gathered by reading these forums, as well as my own experience drinking cider, I'm not expecting that it will. But it's better to be thorough, I guess.
I mixed the must in a bucket with 1 vial of White Labs 'English Cider Yeast' and 5 tsp. of LD Carlson yeast nutrient. Stirred it up well, then poured it into a five gallon carboy and I'm now patiently waiting....
I measured the specific gravity at somewhere between 1.050 and 1.051. I couldn't find a thermometer, and the cider might have been a little cold, so maybe it's really 1.049... I'm going to just call it 1.050 and worst case scenario I'll only be off by only about two tenths of a percent when I calculate ABV. Does that make sense?
I'm planning on letting it ferment all the way down to 1.000 or below. I've seen that it's common to get it all the way down to 0.990. The lower the better as far as I'm concerned. I like everything dry. Then I'll rack it to a clean carboy to let it age in 'secondary' (can you even call it a secondary fermentation if it's not fermenting any more?). I'll leave it for as long as I can, but this is my first batch, so I'm very excited. I don't know how long I'll be able to last before I feel compelled to bottle it up to drink and share.
Everything went extremely smoothly thanks to all that I was able to garner from reading this site and others. Only thing I felt was less than ideal was when to of the plastic rings from the caps on the cider jugs fell into the bucket as I was mixing. I guess that could be a possible contamination? Also, I didn't give the cider of the yeast very much time at all to warm up before I pitched. Hopefully that wasn't a mistake.
Anyway, Thanks again everyone for your help! I'll be updating as I go. If anyone has some tips for beginners, I'm all ears!
