This summer brought plenty of apples in our three kinds of apple trees. I had the luxury of tasting them all and deciding on the mix to have juiced.
And nailed it! Last time I used mostly the sweetest ones and the cider had very little apple taste in it. This one is very much apple tasting. Primary fermentation went on for over three weeks, and the result is bone dry, just like my type 1 diabetic ass likes it.
Also in the 23 l batch: 1 kg of malt (Simpsons Premium English Cara, Viking Cara Pale and Simpsons Maris Otter) to feed micronutrients to the yeast, 1 dl dark sugarcane syrup and 1 dl white sugar in the yeast starter. Yeast was fresh 'sahti' yeast, not really showing its banana character though.
Next time: more malt and taking the time to carefully boil down the volume of apple juice a bit. Hopefully next year, but one can never count on getting apples...
Nope, as I'm going for the minimum of added anything as a bit of an ethos in my brewing. Enzymes are really cool things though. Might try pectinase someday, but evaporating some water to boost flavour is certainly the first thing to try.
Good luck with the apple harvest!
Thanks, we'll need it this year. Are you heating the juice to evaporate? Pulling a vacuum? Just curious.
I was thinking of first boiling some juice and getting a taste of how it tastes afterwards. If I like the effect, then ditch the sulfite, heat in a wide kettle to lose a bit of volume, then a quick boil to sanitise...
If the boil test makes it worse, perhaps just keep it on a bit of heat to evaporate. Vacuum would be nice (could be done in my fermenter), but how to get the vapour out seems a bit of a challenge...?
There are vacuum pumps specifically for that purpose. I can vaguely imagine a system of tubes, and something for mass that might accomplish the same effect. This is, at this time, from a bit of a pre-caffienated brain, so you might disregard. ;-)
This could be a game changer. I'll look into it. My steel fermenter has two posts on the pressure lid and the relief valve can be swapped out for a stiffer one. Would be mad cool to also be able to 'boil down' beer worts like that. Thanks for throwing the mad professor a bone 😂
Oh, now I want to see what M.P. Tasankovasara comes up with. Carry Forth!!