The Bramley cider is as tart as you’d expect and is best drunk mixed with apple juice.
The perry is pretty challenging. Just a fizzy alcoholic drink without much flavour.
The Newport Mixture is the best and actually like cider.
I opened a bottle of the cheaty cider that I had decanted off and had been living in the fridge for a while. It was rock hard. When opened it was stupidly over-fizzy. It took two minutes to open bit by bit and when finally open the bubbles poured out for some time. The yeast, which had been sitting at the bottom, was also thoroughly mixed in by the furious bubbles. Not ideal.
After drinking the cider (it was OK – if yeasty…) I filled the bottle with water and compared it’s tautness with the Christmas Ale and Cider. There was no competition. They are certainly more tight than just water, so off to the cellar they went. After worrying about them being a bit soft, I am now quite relieved they are not as rock hard as the cider.
The Christmas beer has had about a week since bottling and the cider four days. I have to say that the bottles do not seem that taught at all. I obviously have no experience, but I was hoping that they would be rock hard by now, and ready to unleash their fizzy delights come Christmas.
It all boils down to patience of course. If it doesn’t work then I will be wiser and have some flat beer/cider to drink.
I checked the instructions for the cider and it is not supposed to be drunk for another 8 months!
I was going to shuffle the cider on to a new demijohn today so that I could use the yeast at the bottom to start the new “Newport” batch. When I carefully carried it in from the garage (trying to avoid twisting and bumping) I thought it looked pretty clear. My instructions said that I should bottle it at this stage, so I went through the process again like yesterday, sterilising my tube and filling the bottles evenly. The batch looks pretty clear and the specific gravity was 1.002. 
This batch has an interesting history, recorded in my initial scribbled notes. It was 1.040 then I had added a mysterious 113g of sugar (which looks like 4oz). 113g turns out to be the sugar needed to raise one gallon at 1.040 to 1.050. I had worked this out from the sheet in the hydrometer. So, the gravity went from 1.050 to 1.002 – according to the sheet this means that the final alcohol content is about 6%, which is spot on right.
I then added one heaped teaspoon of sugar to each bottle and topped them up a little with water so they looked about the same height so looked nice and even. It wasn’t much water so I don’t think it will affect them much at all. I remembered to have a little taste as well. It was much less harsh than last time. Almost drinkable. Another few weeks and it will be worth a try. A little shake to get the sugar dissolved and off they go to do their fizzy magic for a few days.
I left the must at the bottom in the hope that can be my cider yeast for the next batch.
It is unseasonably warm today, a toasty 17°C. My “clarifying” cider has started to ferment again.
It is slowly clearing though, but the pile of gunk at the bottom (the must?) is pretty thick. I guess it will settle over time.
