Sanitising and Bottling

I finally got around to sanitising and bottling at the weekend. Again using the Thin Bleach and Vinegar Method.

I used a dishwasher rack to drain the bottles as before.

Sanitising and Draining the bottles

I had a final gravity reading of close to 1000 giving me the expected alcohol content of 6%.

Final Gravity Reading ~1000

The brew tastes good, if a little dry, and has already been used to successfully baste a roast ham. As can be seen, the cider is quite cloudy due to using cloudy apple juice, this doesn't bother me but could probably be clarified with some finings in future batches.

Finished Product

My growing collection of swing-top bottles proved it's worth. The swing-tops are much easier to remove old labels from and much quicker to close when bottling. The only small problem I had when bottling was that the table I stored the fermenter on was quite low which made it difficult to use the Little Bottler, leave at least 3 feet between the ground and the fermenter tap to make life easy, especially with the longer 750ml lemonade bottles.

All should be ready to drink before Christmas, in the meantime I picked up a couple of bottles of Aspall's Premier Cru and Sheppy's Single Variety to tide me over.

Beginner Home Brew - First Batch of Cider

So after a long break from posting, I'm back for my second brew batch.

Given that it's apple harvest time, I'll be making a turbo cider. This should hopefully be ready to drink for Christmas.

The recipe really couldn't be simpler, ideal for beginners.

Ingredients:

• Lidl Cloudy Apple Juice - 23 Litres @ €1.25 each
• Cider Yeast with Sweetener - €1.05 from MyBeerAndWine

That's it!

My Bountiful Harvest

Simply pour all of the cider into a fermenter, in my case, a 23 litre Cooper's fermenter, pitch the yeast and wait.

The apple juice doesn't foam up nearly as much as a beer wort, so hopefully the yeast will activate quicker than it did with my previous lager brew.

Apple Juice to Cider - Freshly Pitched Yeast

My Starting Gravity reading came out at 1050, which should give me a final alcohol strength of around 6%, I think this is strong enough for a first batch. If the taste is OK I may try to bump this up in future batches.

Starting Gravity Hydrometer Reading of 1050

I sanitised my fermenter using the No-Rinse solution recommended on Beoir.org - Bleach As A No Rinse Sanitiser thread, as per my last bottling day. If you follow this method, make sure to use Thin Bleach, I used Thick Bleach this time and it takes a lot of rinsing to get rid of the smell of bleach.
Solution:

• 23 Litres of Water
• 30ml of Thin Bleach - Frangrance Free
• 30ml of Vinegar

Add the bleach to the water and stir before adding the vinegar to avoid any nasty chemical reactions!