After a week of fermenting the cider has finally slowed down and stopped bubbling completely so it was time to rack it off into bottles. I only had wine bottles spare at the time so off i went through the usual procedure of sterilising everything prior to bottling. While everything was sterilising i checked the finishing gravity and was amazed to see it had finished to 1.000. After a quick bit of calculation i worked out that the cider 8.26% abv. This stuff should come with a bio hazard label attached

Then i set about the task of syphoning the cider from the demijon to the bottles ,at this point i found out that my auto syphon would not fit into the demijon so i had to resort to the crude sucking method. Once bottled i primed the cider before corking the wine bottles and putting them i a warm place for secondary fermentation. It turns out that the yeasts in the cider absoloutly loved the priming sugars and the Co2 built up at a fantastic rate untill one of the corks blew out. I quickly got the bottle re corked before binding all the corks down with gaffer tape. That should hold the buggers in place. Just need to wait a week before putting them somewhere cool to condition.

I also set about transfering the wine into another fermentation bin as per the instructions. After 8 days the gravity should be less than 1.010. I dropped the sterilised hydrometer in the wine to find it down at 994 so it was deffinately time to move the wine.

I set about sterilising the new bin, airlock & bung and auto syphon as usual and got everything ready for the move. I wanted to do this without stiring up too much sediment. Although the auto syphon does not fit into a demijon it’s perfect for the big 5 gallon bins. Just give the syphon a couple of pumps then let gravity do the rest of the work

I need to wait 12 days now before i can start de-gassing the wine before adding the clearing agents.

Finally i have got round to starting the 30 bottle wine kit. Last night was a busy one as i’ve wanted to get this running for a while now. The kit is a California Connoisseur Merlot and comes highly recomended. As usual i set to cleaning and sterilising all the kit. I also set about sterilising my beer equiptment for another brew but more about that later Once everything was rinsed properly i set to mixing the wine kit following the destructions carefully. These 30 bottle kits are a tad messier to prepare than the beer kits. Just before i pitched the yeast i checked the OG which came in at 1.084 which is about right for this wine kit. I left the yeast to re-hydrate for a while while i topped up the turbo cider with 1 1/2 litres of apple concentrate.

Once i had mixed the yeast in i sealed the bin and fitted the airlock before rinsing off all my beer kit. Once that was done i set to mixing up the Bavarian Beer kit ‘ve been promising to put on. I quickly got the kit ready and took the gravity which came in at 1.042 before pitching the yeast . While this was re-hydrating i had a quick shower then stired the yeast into the wort before sealing the fermentor. Al in it was a good night of brewing. Appologies about the lack of pictures. I was just too busy