Brewday Jan 2010
The saying of plans and battles is true for me in most things. My plan of a bunch of cider using two different yeasts has changed a bit 
If I had examined the smack pack more I would have realised I needed a starter to get the yeast going before pitching…. :/ Mistake two was not having all my mead bottled as three of them where still too cloudy to bottle. I’ve racked them and will have to wait a few days now which will more than likely be sometime next week.
I used the following instead:
1. Tesco cloudy
2. Lidl cloudy
3. Tesco cloudy with black cherry extract (80ml)
4. Tesco clear
5. Sunway pear
Everything is done in four litres since a demijohn can fit about four and a half litres. The Lidl and Tesco’s cloudy look more or less the same, there’s not much difference except price. Tesco’s cloudy cider used to be 99 cent, after the budget and VAT cut it’s €1.25! Lidl is still 99c though 
The pear juice was a bit more expensive, again from Tesco, coming in at around €2 a litre. They have peach and mango juice which I might look at in a few months.
The clear apple juice was the only juice that was from concentrate, the cloudy juices are all pure pressed apple juice and the pear is 50% pear with lots of pulp, even watered down the way it is, it’s fairly thick! The pressed apple juice is quite nice, a bit more flavour off it then the clear stuff. Although bit of wood, a drum and a car jack are all you need to make an apple press if you have the apples to do it! Every thing has been in a demijohn brewing for the last two and a half days, due to thirst issues I’ve only been able to use 3 litres of pear, I’ll sort this tomorrow
Youngs cider yeast was used for this batch, aside from the apple juice this is all I’ve bothered to use as ingredients, the next large cider batch I make will have more in the as I’ll test ingredients that are used to generally provide tannin or add a bite to the cider that juice and yeast cannot do alone! The cherry might make a difference in that way but then that’s what this is all about, after brewing some drinking cider of course. The cherry did seem to make a difference though, the cloudy/cherry mix was the most foamy of the lot, two inches of foam built up over night and thankfully that was all. When I added the additional liter apple juice I’ve left out the last 20ml of cheery extract because of the foam, didn’t want more! I wasn’t sure if it was the cherry that caused it cut since it was the only extra ingredient but I’d rather not risk the floor/walls.
The pear juice is quite thick despite being 50% pear, they’ve used pear pulp instead of filtered juice so it should give the yeast plenty to eat and plenty to leave behind. I really was expecting either a big foam up from the pear, the most was a bit of swelling as pockets of air formed, trapped by the pulp that was floating around the top. I think this one will benefit from some extra stirring.
After pitching it didn’t take too long for airlock activity to start up, about 2 hours for the pear and 3 to 8 hours for the rest. I fully expected the pear to foam up and put of the airlock due to the extra pulp but hardly anything at all.
The Perry or pear cider will get split up in to two sets, one as plain Perry and the second will get a dose of cherry extract to make a cherry flavoured Perry. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the rest of the cider besides drinking it.
I’m sure I’ll find something intresting to do!