Brewing? Maybe, ramblings? Yes.

After awhile of waiting, forgetting, waiting some more and then being distracted by shiney things I’m back looking for an auto syphon for demi-john’s.

http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=722

I originally got the larger version for carboy’s and then after a bit of practice to figure out how it worked and delighting in simpleness and effectivness I went to use it on a demi-john… *thunk* oh, the hole is too small… DAMN. A bit of a search around and few places where selling a smaller one at the time so I gave up for awhile. Now I see the homebrew company have a wider selection of cider kits in stock, €15 for 40 pints of cider isn’t too bad! Although it needs a bit of added sugar so will probably be closer to €20.

Strawberry flavoured cider as well! Although the strawberryness is achived by a sachet of flavouring added afterwards. Perhaps not favourable by some I think I’ll be adding this to my list of purchases next month.

Right, lets do some maths (yay!) for the purposes of this we’ll ignore equipment and yeast costs and just deal with ingredients.

Aim: Make a decent tasting cider that’s cheap.

Methods:  1)Purchase and use a cider kit. 2)Purchase juice from a supermarket.

Kit

A kit will cost €15, for this we’ll use the Black Rock Cider kit from the homebrewcompany

They recommend the addition of 1kg brewing sugar and 300g of lactose so extra cost if you go down that route which we will;

Brewing sugar: €2.28

Lactose 500g : €3.99

The lactose is a bit more than we need but if you make a few ciders it will work out well, 5 brews and you’ll have used all your lactose. We’ll ignore that for now but economies of scale come in to play if you want to plan out 5 batches of cider, you’ll save on delivery costs rather than getting it on a per batch basis. Also equipment costs will average out once a few batches are made.

Delivery: €7

Total: €28.27

Total per pint (40 pints): 0.70c

Total per 500ml (22.5 liters): 0.63c

Figures are rounded a bit, more than likely it will work out at 75c per pint and 67c per 500ml. That’s pretty decent for a drop of cider! Of course this is all if you have some magically sanitising, free fermentation vessel and ignore any kind of evaporation/inexact serving sizes. Equipment costs will come in to play but like I said I’m choosing to ignore them for now until I have a good idea of a usability range of the cheaper plastic fermentors, i.e. you’ll use them for set number of fermentation and then recycle them.

Supermarket Ciders

So, Tesco/Lidl are the ones that are close to me and sell pressed, pure, cloudy apple juice. Tesco sell it at 1.27 per liter and Lidl are a bit kinder on the pocket at 99c a liter. Prices change of course! Tesco did sell at 99c around christmas 2009 but the price went up in the new year.

Direct comparison volume wise, 22.5 liters

Tesco: €28.575

Lidl: €22.275

Wow, okay there’s a bit of a difference there! 6 euro between the two and if you add in the same ingredients for sugar/lactose your hitting €28.55 for the Lidl prices. I’m going with the optimistic option of not paying for delivery for the sugar and lactose but source them at the same place as the juice. Now the thing is does it even need the added sugar and lactose? Perhaps not, it might only need lactose for a bit of sweetening or if you like your cider dry you could use raisins to introduce tannins and make the cider dryer rather than sweeter.

Conclusion

Money wise buying a kit is the same as if you bought the juice from a supermarket, a few cent in the difference if you get the juice for 99c per liter. The only differences might be taste depending on what apples the kit used and the appearance of the cider. The Tesco and Lidl juices are both cloudy so you’ll get a murky scrumpy style cider from them if used and a clear one from the kit. Clear juice is available but can vary from concentrated juice to just filtered juice, the only one I’ve been able to find has been concentrated juice. Not that I’m against concentrated juice, the kits appear to be concentrated juice.

Kits also come with a sachet of yeast negating that cost if your willing to use it. Quite often kits come with substandard yeasts or ones that may not be the freshest due to long shelf times with kits. The kit yeast is fine to use although use of another yeast can improve the taste in the finished cider. Any yeast can be used as a subsitute but for the first few batches it’s best to stick with a cider type yeast, Ale, Weiss and other yeasts can add intresting flavours if you decide to use them I hope to brew a large batch of cider using wyeast American Ale 1056, a Trappist and a Weiss yeast.

After a trip to London I’ve racked my set of ciders. The perry though…. it has fermented but the extra pulp has caused some issues. The first issue is there’s no yeast cake! The yeast is still suspended in the pear, attached to the pulp no doubt, eating away at it. I’m going to have to get a muslin cloth or cheesecloth and do some filtering! I’ll have to figure out something for other ideas I have, mango and peach, both will be equally as thick and a pain in the ass to seperate the yeast from the pulp.

The ciders have turned out well. The cherry cider does taste and smell like cherry but it’s quite sour as well, this might have something to do with the sweet cherry extract I used, it’s generally better to use sour cherries for brewing. This one is a bit darker then the rest. I thought it tasted quite close to red branch cherry cider! Without the extra carbonation or exploding.

The other two cloudies are basicly the same, a slight difference in sweetness but otherwise look and smell the same, the taste different is barely noticable, could be I only notice it because of the hydrometer measurement

The clear cider is the closest to an off the shelf cider I’ve tasted out of the lot. It’s sweet but not overly sweet, just about right so I don’t think I’ll be trying to carbonate this one or sweeten it for general consumption.

Overall young’s cider yeast turned out a decent batch of cider. If I had to pick which to do a large batch I’dgo for the clear apple juice for the sweetness. The cherry would be second if I can sweeten it for bottling.

A few recipies call for the use of tannins from tea bags or raisins, or from a cooking apple. I intend to try both out with some cloudy and clear juice in a few weeks time. Have to plan to get some mead out of the way first!

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!

Low pressure water but still water.

Is there anything a kettle of boiling water can’t do? Thankfully the vavle outside the house was just frozen and it wasn’t a burst pipe under the drive way. Brew day is set for tomorrow, if I don’t fall asleep or get distracted by shiney things.

A new year and a new brew! It’s been longer than two days which I said last time….

I’ll be running four cider experiments, first being cloudy juice vs clear (from concentrate), second being cloudy and clear ciders flavoured with black cherry concentrate, third being a cider yeast vs an Ale yeast (Wyeast 1056) just with cloudy cider and the fourth will be a perry in the cider vs ale yeast. Hopefully all will turn out nice and tasty

Youngs Cider yeast:

1. Cloudy cider
2. Clear cider
3. Cloudy black cherry cider (flavoured with cherry concentrate)
4. Clear black cherry cider (flavoured with cherry concentrate)
5. Perry (pear juice)

American Ale 1056

1. Cloudy cider
2. Perry (pear juice)
3. Forst flowers mead
4. Red or white grape juice

As you can see I have a few different types to get through. I’m making small batches, 1 gallon demijohn each, so I can see what works out best. I’m fairly confident about the cloudy ciders, the mead and the grape batches. The others are juices are from concentrate, while they’ll have plenty of sugar I’m intrested to see if they keep their flavours or if the added absorbic acid contributes to any off flavours. Another off the shelf juice is available to me but is twice the price! Although it contains alot more pulp from pear, I think with that I’d get a large yeast cake at the bottom of the demijohn or at the very least a very cloudy perry.

I’ve chosen the american ale 1056 as the Basic Brewing guys used it for mead with great results, they got a sweetish mead out of it. I want to give it a go with ciders to see what results I get from it.

Working on getting the next batch of cider going. I should be starting it in the next two days or so. Not in time for christmas but perhaps in time for some new year fun I’ll be using Youngs cider yeast in two batches (one cloudy and one clear) and an ale yeast in another two batch, the same as the first two, one cloudy and one clear. I’ve been using juice from tesco’s that’s quiet cheap and the cloudy juice is pure pressed apple juice so none of the concentrate stuff. They have other juices, from concentrate, that would make nice cider style drinks, pear and peach being two I can think off

The last batch of cider had some strong hangover producing properties so I’ll be aiming to avoid that this time around. I belive it was left on the yeast cake too long last time and produced some undesirable alcohols Hopefully the move away from the super wine yeast will help that part.