Bottling the cider and transfering the wine.

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.

The next experiment. Turbo Cider

Well, I havent had the chance to start the wine yet but i have recently aquired a demijon from mi mate Chris for the specific reason of making Turbo Cider. Normal ciders can take months to ferment but not turbo cider. This stuf can be ready to drink in 1 month only. Instead of using pressed apples you use pure apple juice and add sugar for some extra fermentable sugar. I also decided to add half a jar of honey which will provide more sugars and also add more taste. As usual i set about cleaning and throughly sterilising all the gear prior to mixing the cider.

Once everything was cleaned and rinced i added half a jar of honey to the demijon, followed by 3 litres of pure apple juice complete with the bits, and shook vigerously for 5 minutes to make sure everything was mixed up nicely. At this point i poured some of the mix out of the demijon into the trial jar to take the OG. I was pretty supprised to find it at 1.062. This stuff is going to be like rocket fuel.

I poured the content of the trial jar back into the demijon and placed it into the sink filled with hot water to raise the temperature so i could pitch the yeast. At this point i realised i didnt have any yeast so i added a sachet of bread yeast. I know people who have brewed beer with bread yeast and it’s come out brilliant so what the hell, in it went. once the yeast had re-hydrated for half an hour i shook up the demijon again to mix everything up and sealed it with the airlock. All that remains is to add another 1.5 litres of apple juice in the next 24 – 48 hours. I cant wait for this one to finish