Harvested: 9/30/23
Pressed: 10/21/23
ABV: 5.5%
This cider was made with apples from a pick-your-own apples adventure at Indian Ladder Farms with J, J, and M.
A variety of apples were picked on 9/30/23. The cider was pressed immediately after pressing C27. The cider filled a half-gallon growler a little over halfway and measured to 5.5% alcohol potential. I’ll leave it upstairs wrapped loosely in a blanket since we’ll be away next week, likely with the heat turned down and maybe it will be a little warmer up there that way. I didn’t add anything (so no yeast, nutrient, sulfites, priming sugar, etc.). It might be interesting to compare this to C27 since they were made the same way on the same day, the only difference being the apples.
11/25/23
There was not a lot of cider to work with so it wasn’t worth transferring to a mini keg. I primed bottles with c02 then I used a funnel and poured it from the fermentation growler into the bottles. I also poured some into a glass. It smells appley and good, but tastes harsh and not very good. It’s almost woody (oaky?), and a little bitter and a tiny bit sour. Just kinda bad compared to C27 which was made identically. It actually has the taste of farm funk, which I have experienced in hard ciders in a pleasant way, but this takes it a little too far, but maybe if the cider gets a chance to mature it could improve, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Oh and because I bottled them directly, it’s possible they haven’t fermented completely like C27 in which case these two bottles could be solid candidates for bottle bombs. But again we’ll just have to wait and see.
12/15/23
I labelled the bottles. And while I was at it I let a little c02 out of one just to determine if it was a bottle bomb or not. It seemed totally fine!
