Bottled : Easy Cider

The Cider kinda got forgotten for a while, checked on it today and it was crystal clear with a nice firm yeast deposit on the bottom of the Demijohn.

Bottled it up today into 7 and a half 500ml beer bottles after it sitting in the Demijohn for 16 days.

I'll have to add another 250 ml of apple juice next time so I get the full 8 bottles. Put the 1/2 bottle in the fridge for a sample later this evening.

Each bottle was primed with 1/2 a tsp of castor sugar to give it a bit of sparkle, then labeled and put up in the Cabin Brewery to condition.



Not sure if this works out a cheap Cider or not yet, time to crunch some numbers:
4 x 1ltr Apple Juice = £2.40
1 x Packet of Youngs Cider Yeast = 1.35 (only used half a pack)

So a total of £3.75 plus bottle caps and labels at say £0.05 each = £0.35 makes a grand total of £4.10 so thats humm about £0.60 per pint. Thats pretty close to what you can get Cider for in the Supermarket.

Racked : Ginger Wine (2nd Batch)

Stage 3 for the ginger wine has been completed, it's been racked from one demijohn onto another onto 1 lb of demerara sugar, this will still need to be done again in a couple of weeks or so, once the nice yeast cells eat up all that new sugary goodness.

It's quite hard to get all that sugar to dissolve into the wine, so now and again I'll give it a good old shake up.

This batch I'll leave to clear for a lot longer, as the previous batch that was made this year is leaving a heavy deposit in the bottom of the wine bottles.

Racked : Blackcurrant Wine

 Racked the Blackcurrant Wine today, it smells great and has a great colour to it. It had left quite a deposit of junk at the bottom of the demijohn so I thought it best to rack it off.

I may have to top this wine up as there quite a bit of head room after racking, might stop this wine a bit early so it's a sweet wine. I'll check back in on it in a week or so.

Racked : Rhubarb Wine (1st Batch)

The 1st batch of Rhubarb wine had to be racked again off of all the junk in the bottom of the Demijohn.

It's been brewing up now for ages, end of March I started this wine and it's still fermenting away. It only had less than a kilo of sugar added as well. It's looking a lot less like Mud now and more like wine.

Bottled : Youngs Definitive Country Strawberry Wine (Kit)

The Youngs Definitive Country Strawberry Wine Kit has now been bottled. It didn't want to clear very well, so a few days before bottling I used my ClearIt wine finings on it and it cleared lovely.

Had a quick taste of this one, and it has a lot more strawberry flavour than the Wiko kit.

Almost six full 750ml bottles so a bargain.

Equipment : New Boiler 40 litre Buffalo (to do 40 pint batches)

Nice new 40 litre boiler £145 delivered from Nisbets in their sale, I have been using the 20 liter version of this boiler for quite a while now, and now I have the Brewery all set up, I thought it was about time I upgraded to a bigger boiler so I can do full 23 litre batches of BIAB beer.





Got my mother to make me a nice new bigger BIAB bag as well. It's fantastic, nice and heavy duty to cope with the bigger grain bills.

Full webbing handles and seam reinforcements and it fits the boiler like a glove.




Did a couple of electrical modifications to the Boiler before it's first use, changed the Thermal fuse and switch to higher rated ones, and added some insulation to the temperature sensor. See this Forum topic. Did these even before my 1st brew with it, as a just in case, cover all bases type thing as I didn't want the boiler playing up on my brewday.

Racked: Elderflower Wine (3 gal)

The Elderflower wine has now been transferred into 3 one gallon (4.5 ltr) Demijohns, almost got three completely full ones this time. Quite a nice colour as well.

I'll leave this now to ferment away in the Brewery for as long as it takes to finish. I'm hopeful this will clear nice and bright on it's own.