Halloween 2024

 We were top on the area this year.

Cider 2024

 

 Oct 7

Pressed six quarts of juice for apple cider today. Number six looks the most active so far after two hours. Mostly Golden Russet with the last few Cortland and Florina thrown in.

Cut out rot and coddling moth damage. Many had brown traces in the flesh, only discarded the worst of those. Result was four large cheeses. Used one packet of champagne yeast for the batch. As each wine bottle filled I put a rinsed balloon on the neck. Not sure how I could exclude air better. Maybe boil it then add the yeast when cooled?

Tasted dregs after the last bottle filled. It was very sweet and nice.

Need some longer slats as the short ones do not support the cheese frame.

Chuck

 

October 9

All six fermenting. About even now.

Chuck

 

October 11

All balloons four to five inches. All cloudy with steady bubbling. Lowest liquid in 1, 4, 6. 

Tasted bottle one. Filtered it is sweet and weak, pleasant. Smells nice of alcohol. Unfiltered same plus excess apple taste.

Topped bottle with filtered water and restored balloon.

Needs more time to finish. Seems to be progressing properly.

Chuck

October 13

Put bottle one in fridge overnight to crash it for thanksgiving tasting. Even cold it was still fermenting hard this morning. Put back out with the others. Try cold crash later when it slows more. Maybe in the freezer.

Balloons not growing in size. Seems to be a demonstration of CO2 permeability in rubber.

Chuck

October 26

Bottle four is given to Danny to process as he sees fit. Others have slowed fermenting to very little for a few days. They are nearly the same amount of bubbles. Put in lower fridge to cold crash. Will not be available to deal with them Sunday, so it will be two days in the cold. 

Chuck

October 28

I have five bottles of vinegar. It is quite weak with little apple taste. Some bottles have a residual bit of alcohol. All stoppered in fridge for now. Two topped up with filtered water to reduce air head space.

Conclusions

The balloons appear to let oxygen in. Will go to conventional air lock next time. May be worth getting a larger container for the full batch. A gallon would do. The champagne yeast appears to have behaved as expected, cleaning out the apple flavor. Better to try natural yeast next time. Since Canadian apple juice has no stabilizers at all, it is possible to do a test batch with store juice.