Cleaning bottles

I bought the bottle brush in the home brew section. It was $5.99. It's a big beefy thing that is really for cleaning carboys. The day I needed to clean my flip top bottles I found that it didn't fit down the neck. Grrr. So, I took it out to the garage and smashed it with a mallet. Ha! Well, it did modify the width somewhat but I really had to fight to get it down the mouth of the bottles I needed to clean. But, fight I did, because that's who I am. Stubborn. And, really, it was only like 8 bottles or so.

Anyway, while at the homebrew store again, this time to get two more 16 ounce flip top bottles. (I absolutely love these things! I must stock up next garage sale season.) I went to the housecleaning isle to find a better bottle brush. Hubby had brought one home for me already but the handle was too thick to allow it to fit all the way down. Grrr. (No, I didn't smash this one, too.) Well, they didn't have skinny handled ones either. What I did find was a dryer vent brush. It was nice and long and skinny! I decided I would just bend the end up so it would work like a bottle brush. Incidentally it was the same cost as the carboy cleaner. Here it is with my modifications.

 Here it is next to the white carboy brush.

And a closeup to show how I bent up the end. It was super easy. I just used needle nosed pliers.

Pasteurizing

Last night I opened one of my 32 ounce bottles and had to hold the cap on lightly to keep it from overflowing. I put it in the fridge to stop the yeast from multiplying and today I am pasteurizing it.
It had some sediment on the bottom so I racked it off into two 16 ounce bottles.

I think this was a good thing to do for two reasons. First, racking it off will prevent any flavor change that the cider will take on from sitting on it's lees. I did it because the amount of sediment was pretty thick (about a 1/4" or so). I had used fresh pressed apple juice to back sweeten it and this particular bottle got the last of the jug which had sediment in the bottom. It was the bottle that carbed up the fastest, too. So, I think it had quite a bit of natural yeast in that was activated as well. The second reason, was that the bottle from the fridge was cold and I thought it might break if I put it in the 190 degree water. I warmed up the two 16 ounce bottles with hot water before racking the cold cider into them.

Below is a photo of the cider in the 32 ounce bottle (in the foreground) before I racked it off.

I am also running a test on how long it takes the 32 ounce bottle to reach 140 F. I had read this post on HomeBrewTalk which advises this.

I have three bottles in my pressure canner right now. I am only using the pressure canner because it provides a cautionary measure against bottle bombs. I took out the pressure dial so steam can escape. It also gives me a little porthole to view the thermometer in the 32 ounce bottle I have in there. The other two bottles are the 16 ounce ones with the cider.

None of my other bottles of cider are carbonated enough yet. There are two more bottles that I back sweetened with fresh cider and three with honey.

So, I just checked the temp and it has been 7 min. It is up to 178 now. Shoot, I missed the 140 mark. Sorry, now I don't have results to share on how long it took to get there.

I think I will wait the remaining three minutes before I take the bottles out. (10 minutes is the recommended time by Pappers of the HomeBrewTalk forum whose method I am following.)

Now the bottles are out and I checked the temp of the 32 ounce bottle again. It is holding at 178.

Here's the finished product.

Bottling

I finally got this cider into bottles. I decided to "backsweeten". I did keep some pure but in the other bottles I experimented with honey (just to taste) and fresh local pressed cider from Orondo Cider Works ($5 for a half gallon). It has no preservatives and is just UV treated.

The hardest part about bottling was swirling the cider carefully to mix the honey but not to splash it and introduce oxygen.

My plan is to open them every day to check how well they are carbing up. This will happen because the yeast will activate with the addition of sugar and produce carbon dioxide. At the point that I like them I can bottle pasteurize them to stop the yeast.

Here's a photo showing how much hard cider I filled them with before adding the juice.

From left to right: campden treated still cider (nothing added), no campden still cider, honey sweetened and honey sweetened (both of the last ones also were from the "no campden" batch).

Here's a close up of the two still ciders. On the left is the one from the batch treated with campden tablets. I just wanted to see if I could taste a difference or not.

I am going to check with the people on Home Brew Talk to see what they think about bottle pasteurizing in these bottles.

I'm actually really relieved to have this bottled up. I think it was worrying me having so much headspace after I had first racked it.

Well, I'll get back to you once I have some results from tasting.

Racking Time

I racked it off it's lees yesterday afternoon. I have way too much headspace to leave it for long (too much oxygen exposure).

I need to bottle it. I think I'm going to add some fresh pressed apple juice. That way the yeast will have something to eat and produce carbonation. I know I need to be careful not to make bottle bombs so I'm going to use a plastic bottle or a swing cap bottle and check it often. Once it reaches the carbonation I want, I'll bottle pasteurize it using this method.

I found a great website yesterday for measurements and advice for one gallon batches. I've found that most recipes and advice is for five gallon batches.

I tasted each brew again, too. I can't tell the difference between the two. Both are very dry and a little harsh. I've read that they'll mellow with age and the apple flavors will come forward somewhat. I plan on keeping a little "pure" (not add any juice to it) to see how I like it in a few months.

I did try an unfiltered cider that just had some honey added. It's called Honey Crisp by Crispin. It was very good. Maybe I should do a little with honey, too.

Well, that's all for now. I will update when I/we have done some real taste testing.

Wild Fermentation

This was even more exciting than doing the apple cider with store bought yeast. I had extra juice and I decided I wanted to see if it would ferment on its own. I had also read this blog post from Delicious Obsessions.

Here is the first of the two quart jars I had. It is juice from a pressing that took 2 days to get enough juice. It had been refrigerated for a couple days prior to setting it out at room temp. I put clean cheesecloth over the jar and secured it with a rubber band. Then I worried that wasn't enough protection so I also covered it in plastic that I poked numerous holes in.

 This second quart is juice that was pressed the same day and left out at room temp from the beginning. I covered it with paper towel at first that was secured with a rubber band and then switched to cheesecloth (no plastic with holes this time) when I got around to it.

Here they are a few days later. On the left is Batch 2. It is on Day 5. This was the first day I noticed any activity. It was bubbling and frothy on top. I tasted it and it was like slightly spikey apple juice. Yummy. Didn't taste like there was much alcohol in it at all.  On the right is Batch 1. The white layer you see is actually mould. It was on Day 8. There was no way to scoop it out as it was a solid film so I dumped it. It was not fermenting at all. 

So, now all that is left is Batch 2. I refrigerated it yesterday which was Day 18 for it. Here it is today on Day 19. In a separate post I have described another brew I have that I fermented with Champagne yeast that is also on Day 19 and it has cleared nicely. This one is definitely different. I'll have to taste them both and report. I love that it actually worked. I also found it very interesting that it did not work at all with the less than fresh cider in Batch 1.

UPDATE: Yesterday, Dec. 3rd (Day 19), I racked it off it's lees and left it out at room temp. I did this because when I tasted it I found it really sour. I had the thought of making apple cider vinegar earlier so I think I'll just let it go that route now.

Progress Report

First, I need to share the single biggest mistake I've made so far. I did not take an initial reading of the specific gravity of the juice I started with. Without that I'm pretty sure there is no way to tell what the alcohol content of my cider is. It's not that the reading is hard to take nor does it require expensive equipment.  You can buy a hydrometer at your local brew shop for about $10.00. It was simply a newbie mistake.

So, to get you caught up on where my cider is at now, I have three batches. The first pressing I did took two days on Nov. 9 and 10.  On Nov. 11 I put it into a 1 gallon glass jug and treated it with a campden tablet. On Nov. 12 I pitched the yeast. On November 13 I pressed another gallon of juice. For this batch I did not use a campden tablet because I wanted to see what a difference it made. For both gallons I used the champagne yeast I mentioned in a previous post. The third batch was an experimentation with wild yeast. I will post about that separately.

I did not add any sugar to anything. I just wanted pure fermented apple juice.

The following photo is Day 1 of the Untreated gallon.








Here are both the Treated and Untreated batches. On the right is the Treated on Day 3. The other is the Untreated Day 2.

The Treated one started fermenting quicker and seemed to finish quite ahead of the other. I had read that the campden tablets were really not necessary as the store-bought yeast was usually strong enough to overcome the wild yeast that is naturally present. I just wanted to see the difference. You may have noticed the color difference between the two. The Treated one was more orangey and the Untreated more brown.

Here are both batches again.  On the left is the Treated one on Day 4, and on the right is Untreated Day 3. You can see the sediment is greater on the Treated.

A closeup photo on Day 5 for the Untreated (on the right) and Day 6 for the Treated shows a layer of white sediment.  This was Nov. 17.  I tasted it and the untreated batch still tasted a little sweet and appley but I didn't stop fermentation there because I didn't think there'd be much point in drinking it if it didn't have much of a kick :)

Here are the two batches on Nov. 21. On the right is the Treated and on the left the Untreated. I tasted them both and couldn't tell a great deal of difference between the two. They tasted very dry, like wine. I don't know what percent of alcohol it has but it gave me a nice buzz. It sure would have been nice if I had taken that initial reading!

Today is December 1st, 2012 and the yeast seems to be dormant. I know I need to "rack" it off its lees into a second fermentation vessel or bottle it.  This means I carefully siphon it out of the initial fermentation vessel trying to introduce as little extra oxygen as possible and leaving behind all the exhausted yeast particles and sediment in the bottom. I believe you can leave it in the initial fermentation vessel for 3 weeks. If you leave it too long it will take on "off" flavors. I just have a couple days left until that deadline.

Here is Treated on the left on Day 20 and Untreated on Day 19.

So, I am at the point where I need to figure out how to regain that apple flavor and maybe get it carbonated. I joined the HomeBrewTalk forum so I could ask questions and post pictures to get advice. I haven't done that yet but it is a very informative and helpful website.

Pressing the Apples

I got just over a gallon and a quart from pressing about 48 small to medium sized Golden Delicious apples.

The beautiful "seconds".

I chopped them before adding them to my food processor.

They needed a little encouragement to continue moving around enough to come in contact with the blades at first. I was able to do 8 at a time. I found this handy plastic child's chopstick set in my drawer. (I checked first to make sure it wasn't long enough to reach the blades.)

Here is what the apples looked like after chopping. I let the processor run until everything was moving smoothly and I couldn't see any large chunks of apple left.

I have a little stand and some jelly bags from my canning supplies so I let the pulp hang for a while. At this point I think it hung there for three hours or so while I was in the garage having fun trying to build the frame for my press. About 4 cups of juice drained out during that time. I have since learned that this leaves the pomace out exposed to the air too long and isn't good. Also, my son came along and decided to "help" the juice out by squeezing the bag with his sweet little 8 year old hands.

The picture below shows my awesome press in action. Well, it doesn't have all the proper parts yet. I used what I had in my kitchen to get me by until I finish it. One thing I did pick up was some Corian countertop pieces. I stopped by a local fabricator and asked if they had any scrap pieces. I ended up buying 5 sink cutouts for $15. I plan on grooving them. The Corian guy told me if I needed to cut them I should do it with a carbide tipped blade.

Above you will see the scissor jack partly covered with tinfoil (I thought it would help keep chunks of grease or whatever falling into the cider). The thing inside the plastic bag is a piece of firewood to bring the pressing power down to contact the Corian sink cutout. (I cut the ends of the firewood to square it as best I could.) In between the two pieces of Corian is the apple pulp which is inside the jelly bag pictured previously.

I think this worked well enough to keep up with the amount of pulp my food processor can put out. After pureeing three sets of 8 apples each (I did let it rest a little in between) it was feeling fairly hot.  I did the second batch of three sets of 8 apples each the next day. If I do end up with more apples I will definitely need to build an apple grinder :)

DIY Cider Press Frame

Before we get to that though, I have some more stuff to get off my chest. I've thought a lot about how I've started out this relationship. I may have claimed truth and honesty but I've begun to doubt that anything I said was really true or honest. I'm wondering what kind of impression I've made. I think I may have come across sounding like a hot shot. So, yeah, sometimes I think I am a hot shot. But maybe I should just be a little more patient and just let you get to know me and draw your own conclusions. Who am I to tell you who I am? Who really knows what they are like and can definitely say, "I am this way, blah, blah"? It's too absolute.
I know I like to go for the shock factor. I like to phrase things in concrete ways. But sometimes I really annoy myself. I feel exhausted after "putting on a show."
Ok, enough of that.
Here's what I found when I searched "diy cider press", "cheap easy cider press", "make your own cider press", "homemade cider press", etc. I also did image searches.
The Deliberate Agragarian has a Whizbang Cider Press that you can order plans for:

He uses a scissor jack and a sturdy wooden frame. I like how he has a 2x6 on pegs so he has a built in blocking method to bring the pressing power right to where he needs it depending on how much pulp he's pressing. (All that's missing in the picture is the pressing basket.)

This one is from Dave Goddard that he posted plans for at downsizer.net.

I really like the table top size and simple design.

Here's another simple design using some more common items. It is from a homebrew website called BrewingKB and was posted by sashurlow. Here's the link.

They used cutting boards as separators between the cheeses (apple pulp wrapped in pressing cloth) an the white upright rods are made from clothes hangers. The pressing cloth used was no-see-um netting.

I also found a apple grinder and press made out of a converted washing machine. This is really neat and different. You would have to be somewhat unconcerned about efficiency, though. It doesn't get the most juice out of the apples but as far as time involved it sounds like a good alternative. I found it here.

I have to show you this press, as well, because it was the most beautiful one I saw. I love wood and this guy used huge beams he had left over from tearing down a barn. I found it on HomeBrewTalk (pretty handy website for cider brewing info, too).

The, hands-down, simplest press I found was the following one. The website was really helpful, too, for cider making advice.

Ha! I've showed you so many you are not going to care about mine, now. Anyway, what I began to see was a pattern. Pretty simple, really. You need a heavy duty frame. You can use a bottle jack, a scissor jack or a tommy bar. You can make a pressing basket and line it with pressing fabric or you can make pressing plates and just layer cheeses of apple pulp wrapped in pressing fabric. It seems the best method I saw was using pressing plates layered between apple pulp inside a pressing basket lined with cloth. Now, since I already had my apples and wanted to get on with getting some juice to work with, I went ahead with what I had on hand and thought I'd come back to it later and make a pressing basket.

I went out to our garage and started pulling out what lumber we had left over from building a chicken coop. I found a few 2x4's and a 2x6. I wasn't sure what measurements would be best and and I thought the bigger the better but I was limited by what I had on hand. It is good for me to have limits! So, I cut the two 2x4's in half. I decided these would be the uprights. I cut the 2x6 in half as well. It already had a small piece cut off the end so my press didn't end up square but more rectangular. I used the 2x6 pieces as the horizontals. I laid my 6 pieces of lumber on the floor and clamped it and squared it and drilled holes in it for the bolts. I bolted it together and was extremely proud of myself and finished just as my husband got home from work. I had been out there for 4 hours and hadn't made dinner. Oops :)

Later, as my husband helped me fix my silly frame, he told me he was glad I had fun. This was said with a shake of his head as he was fighting with clamps and added layers of lumber. Lesson learned: it is far easier to drill ONE set of holes than try and line up and square more pieces later that need to be drilled. Yikes. 

So, here's my final design:

The changes I made to my original design were to add another 2x6 horizontal board to each of the original top and bottom cross pieces. I also brought up the bottom to be one foot off the floor. And I added (well, sweet hubby did ;) two 2x4's to the bottom horizontal to widen it so that there'd be a sort of platform area. He put all of it together with metal rods that he threaded with an attachment he bought for the drill. Then he was able to put bolts and washers on. I think this was a cheaper option than trying to find really long bolts. We would have needed four 8" bolts for the top corners and four 12" bolts for the bottom. In the photo it looks like there is only one bolt through each bottom corner but what you can't see is another bolt below the 2x4.

So, that's all I have so far on the press frame. I'll write a separate post about actually pressing the apples.

I'm going to go check on my cider brewing experiment now. Heeeeee heeeee :) (I'm still sooooooooo excited about that!)

Truth, Honesty and Cider!

I want to start off this blog on the right foot. With honesty. With clearly stated intentions. (Hopefully it will keep me on the right track.)
Ok, here goes...I am extremely selfish. I have two boys and a wonderful husband but I don't cook or bake for them unless I am hungry, you know what I mean?
I am also rather obsessive and tend to take things too seriously. I rarely do anything half-heartedly. I am also fairly arrogant and when I do something I usually think it's the best that there ever was. At least, it's the best in my situation. If you had the same circumstances as me you couldn't do it better.
I am also full of hypocrisies and juxtapositions. Like this:

Sometimes I'm the little girl making the perfect castle and sometimes I'm the obnoxious, sand kicker.  I've also noticed I tend to live one way inside my head and often my reality doesn't match up. Sometimes I see clearly my shortfalls and sometimes I am embarrassingly delusional.

Ok, now that that's out of the way (for now). I want to state my intentions. I intend to be honest and not give in to the bragging I want to do. If something goes wrong, I will tell you. I read a really good book recently by Kurt Timmermeister and what I loved about the author most was his honesty. He told it all; even the stuff that did not make him look good. I want to be like that.

Now, ON TO THE CIDER ADVENTURE! (yes, I am shouting) I am WAY too excited about this. (This is normal for me. I go from one obsession to the next.)

I live in apple country. We actually claim to be the Apple Capital of the world. I don't know how true that is with how many apples China produces but, whatever. We grow a lot of apples here. I was up at my local orchard a couple weeks ago and I picked up about a hundred pounds of Golden Delicious apples. They were mostly seconds and I got them basically for free. (I paid $5 for the good ones and they gave me three 5 gallon pails of the seconds.) I made some apple pie filling, I made some apple sauce. Then I decided to juice them. When I was researching how to make a cider press I found how to make hard cider. I read a lense on squidoo by JellyGirl1. It sounded too easy not to try.

It took me a couple days to press a gallon of cider (I was in the middle of researching and making my press, too). I finished on Nov. 10, 2012.

I've decided to post separately about pressing the apples.

I went to my local homebrew store which is an awesome store called Stan's Merry Mart and purchased all the supplies I thought I'd need for $24.21.

Two glass gallon jugs ($5.47 each), 2 rubber stoppers ($1.29 each), 2 airlocks ($.79 each), 2 caps ($1.29 each), yeast ($0.99), campden tablets ($1.29 for 25) and a 2.3 feet of food grade tubing at $.49/sqft (I should have bought a longer piece).

The first recipe and method I am trying is:
1 gallon of cider;
1 campden tablet; and a
1/2 a packet of Red Star® Pasteur Champagne yeast (I accidentally added a little more than half).

Here is my hard cider journey:

DAY 1
On Nov. 12 I pitched (it means added) the yeast. This was after waiting for 48 hours after adding the campden tablet which kills all the wild yeast, etc. I sanitized the airlock and stopper in vinegar for a few minutes and rinsed it with clean water. I don't even know if the vinegar does a good enough job of sanitizing but that's what I did.

On the back of the yeast packet it said to add the yeast to warm water but I didn't want to dilute the cider so I poured out some of the cider and warmed it.

Then I inserted the stopper and filled the airlock with water (some use vodka but I didn't have any) to the fill line an put that in the stopper.

Here's Day 1's official photo:

DAY 2

In the morning I noticed bubbles coming out of the airlock. I was so excited. They weren't very frequent but it meant that the yeast was alive and kicking!  I climbed up on a stool to see little bubbles coming up through the cider.

photo taken at 8:39 am on Nov. 13, 2012.

Later on on Day 2 I started wondering if I should store the cider somewhere dark so now it lives in my son's closet. Just in case it explodes it will go all over his stuff and not mine. :) he he

So, now I will go and check on the experiment and take Day 3's photo.