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12/20/22
I put some PBW in the carboy and bucket this morning, and let things clean while I was at work. I slipped out a little bit early in the afternoon and picked up 2 bushels of apples at DeVoe’s. I must be getting the system down because I made quick work of sanitizing everything then filling the 6-gallon carboy, a 1-gallon carboy, plus a little extra. Also the apples were easy to press because the cider just fell out of the ground apples. I added pectic enzyme immediately after pressing. It’s my first time using pectic enzyme. The specific gravity reading suggested an alcohol potential of 5%. The resulting cider is good, but not the strongest in terms of flavor or sweetness.
Why pectic enzyme? A batch last year came out a little weird, with swirling clouds that I suspect are a result of pectin doing it’s thing. Also adding the enzyme may accelerate the process of clarifying the cider. I kind of like a cloudy cider, but the occasional clear one is good as well. Also I suspect there may be other benefits to adding the pectic enzyme such as encouraging the sediment to drop out more quickly, which I think is a benefit for my cider. The quicker I can get it off the sediment the better as far as avoiding off-flavors. That’s the idea anyway.
Wow just 2-3 hours later a ton of sediment has dropped out already:
12/22/22
There is a thin layer of bubbles on the surface, but it seems a little slow to take off. I added about 1.5 teaspoons (just a little) of yeast nutrient.
It sounds like you can add pectic enzyme earlier, to the ground apples to produce something like a 10% better yield because more juice will extract.
Also by adding the yeast nutrient like I did may also cause some of the nutrients to drop out, so adding a yeast nutrient might not be a bad idea.
12/23/22
It's foaming quite a bit, if it keeps going it might blow its top. I gave it a little swirl to try and reduce the foam a bit.
12/25/22
The airlock is bubbling once per second, and you can see the fizz fixing to the surface. It’s going great so far!
12/27/22
It quickly slowed to 35 seconds between bubbles! I added about a teaspoon of yeast nutrient. It doesn't seem to have done anything after a few hours so maybe it just fermented quickly.
12/29/22
The airlock isn’t bubbling at all! There is a scant quarter inch of sediment. I moved it down to the ‘cold room’ to cold crash it.
12/30/22
I transferred the cider from the carboy into a 5-gallon keg. There was also enough to half fill a 1.5 gallon keg.
The cider looks great, and tastes good!
It looks like almost all the sugar is fermented which is good:
I hooked it them up to the c02 tank (in the picture there is also some plain seltzer hooked up) to get the process of carbonation started:
12/31/22
I shook the kegs for 5-10 minutes at roughly 18 lbs pressure to accelerate the carbonation process.
1/1/23
I bottled the cider from both kegs, yielding 2 cases plus a few bottles.
