crescent moon cider
brewed: 05/05/13
bottled: 24/05/13
subsequent batch info: definitely. adjustment to ingredients and process first.
ingredients:
7.5L woolworths apple juice
1.7L goulburn valley pear juice
500mL lipton tea (3 x teabags)
200gms australian honey
50mL fresh lemon juice (whole lemon)
5gms DCL yeast US-05 - american ale
process:
10L batch. add lemon juice and honey to 500mL tea (boiling water), cool to pitching temp, combine all ingredients to fermenter. pitch at 16C.
OG: 1.048
FG: 1.012 (bottled, approximately 1.005-8).
%AbV: 4.8% (estimated)
ibu: n/a
brewing notes:
what a quick and easy drink to make! from start to finish it literally took about an hour with all cleaning up done. really simple process. combine all ingredients and pitch yeast.
tasting notes:
tasting it off the bat it was lovely. quite easy to discern all combining additions (apple, pear, honey, lemon, tea). looking very forward to how this will taste after fermentation.
14/05/05 - had a first taste today and it tastes AMAZING!! unbelievable apple and distinct honey-pair flavours dominate, with an ever-so-slight tea character. hopefully it is finished fermenting, as if it ferments more, the taste will become much drier as the alcohol increases and the sugar and sweetness is eaten up. will test gravity again in another few days and see!
16/05/05 - so today i've decided i'd like to bottle the ciders early. not normally something that should be done, but it appears my fermenting has stalled. i tasted it and it tastes really nice so i'm going to now crash chill the cider. this will halt any and all yeast activity. i'm then going to bottle the cider and slowly raise it to room temperature. this will hopefully wake up the yeast and it will then begin to ferment again. because it is in an airtight bottle, i'll have to be careful to check when this happens (the bottles get tigher due to the co2) and then immediately crash chill the bottles. once this happens, i'll have carbonated cider which is still technically sweet without adding additional sweetener! (fingers crossed it goes well).
24/05/05 - after chilling it right down to 2C since the 16th, i got a chance to bottle it today. have kept it in the ferment fridge and slowly letting it rise to 18C. am going to check on it daily to check for carbonation. had another taste from the fermenter and WOW. amazing.
31/05/13 - had a taste today after a few days in the bottle while it was carbonating and, sad to say, it has lost its nice sweetness (what i was hoping to avoid in the first place). it tasted cider-esque but was very watery and wine-like too. not too bad but not really how i'd have liked it to be. i might keep some and let it go for a while before i try again, but in future, i might look to simply crash chill when it gets down to the same gravity (1.012ish) and just keep it as a 'scrumpy'; a non-fermented cider. it was tasting amazeballs out of the fermenter.
12/06/13 - so had another taste of it tonight and to be 100% honest, i could start to like it. definitely not the best but still a decent attempt at a cider. commercial ciders must be quite hard to get sweet. will either try with sweetener next time, or keep it scrumpy. looking forward to keeping these cold, as they've fermented up nicely, and testing again in another few weeks.
recipe adapted from: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/recipe/950-somerset-gold/