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.

Well everything seems to have calmed down now. The brew is fermenting away happily at 23 degrees. The gravity has dropped an amazing 33 points from 1.039 to 1.006 after only 3 days. The brew is currently at 4.4% ABV and there’s still sugar left to ferment Thank god it’s not spoiled.