I'm pretty sure I've never mentioned that I'm a home brewer on AF.

Tonight was the night to transfer my latest creation (an English-style brown ale) from the fermenter to the keg. While I'm absentmindedly monitoring the process, I notice that I have two jugs of apple juice sitting on the kitchen counter and start to daydream about the virtues of hard cider.

Now, I've got a batch of dry cider (more like an apple wine) going at the moment, but it's not going to be ready to package for a few weeks, and not ready for drinking for a couple of months. Woe is me.

If only there was a way to get a small, quick batch of cider ready to drink.... I'd be a happy Great Old One.

Alas, I have no yeast handy, and the beer and wine supply shop is closed. It seems that it is not to be.

But wait - at the bottom of my fermenter is the answer to my salvation! As the yeast does it's thing and converts fermentable sugars to alcohol, it drops out of suspension and collects at the bottom of the container, dormant and waiting for more sugars to consume. Home brewers will sometimes throw a second batch on top of the dregs of the first for a quick start to the fermentation process.

But to start a cider on top of the dregs of a batch of ale? Insanity! Nobody would EVER do that. It's mad, I tell you.

So I do what any desperate mad hobo scientist might do, and drained as much of the ale dregs as I could, and poured the apple juice on top of the sediment, capped the fermenter and put an airlock on it.

Less than 30 minutes later, the first bubbles come through the lock, indicating that fermentation has begun in earnest. Usually it takes a few hours, sometimes as long as two days.

I don't expect this insane experiment to end well. Come tasting time, people will probably die (*). Even worse - I may produce a beverage so foul that I needs to be dumped, and all that precious fermentable sugar may go to waste, without anyone enjoying the intoxicating benefits of cidery drunkenness. I expect it to taste bad, and smell worse. It may very well be the worst excuse for an alcoholic beverage produced in written history. Then again, I'm sure people have probably sought the heavenly embrace of intoxication with far, far worse swill that we can possibly imagine.

But hey, that's why we do experiments, and it's all in the name of MAD HOBO SCIENCE.





(*) In case you're wondering, this is a bit of hyperbole. There aren't any pathogens capable of living or reproducing within cider or beer that can kill you.

P.S. If you don't hear from me after 4 or 5 days have elapsed from now, you'll at least know why.

it!!

(February 14, 2012 at 12:26 am)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: If you don't hear from me after 4 or 5 days have elapsed from now, you'll at least know why.

Maybe you oughta pray, for extra insurance...

Hey cool! I'm a wine maker myself, and bought a beer kit but haven't brewed it yet. I've been thinking of making a carbonated hard dry cider to put in some of these beer bottles I've been saving. I just haven't worked out what I think the alcohol content should be and how much priming sugar to add. I think I'll start with a 1 gallon batch to experiment, and when I perfect my process will try a 5 gallon batch.

(February 14, 2012 at 12:00 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote: Hey cool! I'm a wine maker myself, and bought a beer kit but haven't brewed it yet. I've been thinking of making a carbonated hard dry cider to put in some of these beer bottles I've been saving. I just haven't worked out what I think the alcohol content should be and how much priming sugar to add. I think I'll start with a 1 gallon batch to experiment, and when I perfect my process will try a 5 gallon batch.

Couldn't tell you how much priming sugar to use, I don't use the stuff, I mostly keg and force carbonate. This batch I'm going to cold crash to stop the fermentation and keep it semi-sweet.

I also plan to make some sparkling wine some time as soon as I get some champagne bottles saved up.

I found a page on the internet which has a calculator on how much priming sugar to add and what pressure it will give.

(February 14, 2012 at 2:19 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote: I also plan to make some sparkling wine some time as soon as I get some champagne bottles saved up.

I found a page on the internet which has a calculator on how much priming sugar to add and what pressure it will give.

Years ago, I used to use priming sugar when bottling - I found it to be a bit of an art. Following the conventional wisdom of beer brewing at the time (bottle after you have stable SG readings over three days), it could be difficult to get consistent carbonation - as on that third day, fermentation was probably not actually complete and there was still residual fermentable sugar left. In some cases, enough to significantly overcarbonate.

I found it worked a lot better to wait for at least 3-5 days after stable SG was reached before packaging, and longer is better. As a winemaker, this is probably second nature to you.

Beer, especially from extract, is really pretty easy, best two bits of advice I know is to maintain proper sanitation, and to ferment and bottle condition longer than most instructions tell you to. Winemaking always seemed a bit mysterious to me, though now I'm learning that it really isn't all that different from beer or cider. I'm prepping to do my first batch of mead, and I'm thinking about doing a true grape wine after my apple "wine" gets packaged in a couple of months.

(February 14, 2012 at 3:32 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I found it worked a lot better to wait for at least 3-5 days after stable SG was reached before packaging, and longer is better. As a winemaker, this is probably second nature to you.

I usually let my wine age 6 months to a year before bottling. When I first started I was always in a rush to get it into the bottle ASAP, but I've learned that time is an ingredient. Now that I've perfected my technique, I've been making really good wine.

(February 14, 2012 at 4:03 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote:

(February 14, 2012 at 3:32 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I found it worked a lot better to wait for at least 3-5 days after stable SG was reached before packaging, and longer is better. As a winemaker, this is probably second nature to you.

I usually let my wine age 6 months to a year before bottling. When I first started I was always in a rush to get it into the bottle ASAP, but I've learned that time is an ingredient. Now that I've perfected my technique, I've been making really good wine.

Yeah, unfortunately with my current living situation, I don't have the luxury of leaving something unpackaged that long. Once it's in the keg, or in a bottle, storage becomes much less of an issue.

I keep all my jugs in a back room with my radio room/office. I've got 28 gallons of wine aging right now, and plan to start another 5 gallon batch as soon as I get one of my current 5 gallon batches bottled.

I really need to start building my wine rack for our cellar, because 28 gallons of wine = 140 750 ml bottles of wine.