Dry dry cider that smells of newborn nappies

Cider

As usual I shot from the hip with the cider I’m making (I really need to learn).  I only had access to rather acidic bramleys and initially just shoved in a campden tablet and waited.  Nothing at all happened so when I went to my lovely brewing shop they suggested whacking in some cider yeast.  They also kindly gave me their printed cider instructions.

2013-10-20 16.11.58The gravity of my apple juice was very low, so I stuck some soft brown sugar in (on a whim) to bring it up to 1050.  The fermentation followed the typical not-very-much to insane-frothing (see video below).  My recipe said leave it for four days, check it and make sure that it does not go below a gravity of 1005.  I measured it after 3.5 days and the gravity was 1004.  Oops.  It is already pretty dry with quite a kick, and still bubbling away merrily.  After a little research I figured that it was too warm (should have done it in the cellar?) and maybe I should not have added the sugar.

The dreadful smell of new born nappies was not encouraging, nor was the colour of the yeast froth that matched the colour of those delightful little packages from early fatherhood.

What to do?  Well, I have racked it off carefully and am putting it in a cold place.  Not sure what to do after that.

 

Perry (Pear Cider)

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After the triumph of the crider (more another time, I am still catching up), I finished preparing the perry today.  I’d left some pears to ripen with a banana to help them along.  I use a recipe from cider-making.co.uk which seems a pretty simple “shove it all in and see” sort of thing.  The juice was squeezed once more in the juicer loaned to us by the lovely Wendy from my wife’s pattern cutting class.  500D_1688We used a mixture of Beurre Hardy (20%) and Doyenne du Comice (80%) pears because that is what we have in the garden.

I’d had about 60% of a demijohn waiting to be topped up for a few  days.  I’d put a campden tablet in there to keep it bacteria free.  Campden tablets don’t kill yeast as far as I can tell, they just suppress it for a while.  I put another tablet in today and shoved in the yeast nutrient, pectolase and yeast at the same time.  I didn’t fit an airlock this time because I think I read somewhere that you need to give the gases time to clear that are made by the tablet.  But I could be talking nonsense.  Anyway, if the cider is anything to go by it will go bonkers in 48 hours and I can fit the bubbler after that.  Given I have no spare bubbler at the moment (one is in the post) I’d be a bit stuffed anyway if I wanted one.

I actually measured the specific gravity on this one – initially 1070, I added some water and it went to 1080?!  I gave it a good stir and it came back down.  It was 1050 (after 400ml of water) when I chucked in the yeast.  Here it is, ready to go.

500D_1690