First time cider questions/?reassurance

[Adam apple]

Hi all, I recently came into around 70kg of varied apples from a local orchard. Wine making and sprits is very popular out here but cider isn't a thing (I'm a Brit living in a rural area of Slovakia). I got some carboys from someone and bought a sachet of wine yeast, yeast nutrient and some new airlocks then pressed the whole lot up and decanted into 3x 10 litre and 2x 5 litre carboys on the 30th of Oct, topping up with a few litres of shop bought 100% apple juice. Initially I left them in the barn and by day five there was nothing going on in the airlocks so I got curious and asked my slightly disapproving other half to translate the yeast packet which recommended a minimum temp of 12c. At the time it was around 0-1c at nights and 2-8c in the day and quickly getting colder so I shamefully brought them in our apartment where it's in the low 20s and within a day they started bubbling away like crazy. Around five days later they slowed right down so I topped up with some more juice and they bubbled right up again, this time right out through the airlocks. After things had calmed down I re-sterilized the airlocks and put back in place. 20 days now after initial pressing I'm seeing a bubble every few minutes and a lot of the foamy scummy stuff seems to have subsided although there's much residue on the 10cm of unfilled glass still. No signs of mouldy infection or anything sinister but very murky juice inside, can't see the bottom as they're in baskets.

I've read so much on the internet now about this and can see there's no single correct way of doing this and a bit confused so I guess I'm keen to see what my options are now? I have access to more carboys so could syphon into secondary vessels or should I stay put a bit longer or even until bottling. Top up again? Should I worry about the residue left from when they bubbled over? Following what seemed a pretty rigorous initial fermentation and storage in a warm environment am I ahead of schedule? I initially imagined leaving them in the barn and having a drink in the spring but probably not realistic at high altitude in continental Europe so am limited to my warm kitchen.

I only have a basic grasp of the language and my wife's patience is wearing thin so I need to make use of only the most basic resources I have available and try to keep things relatively simple. In the hardware shop where I bought the airlocks and yeast they have something called a mustometer for 4 euros which I suspect is a hydrometer but not sure how much use it is at this stage. I'm no connoisseur but would rather end up with something drinkable and avoid pouring 40 litres into the river. If it hasn't gone too badly I'll probably take it a bit more seriously next year as free/cheap fruit is abundant here.

Any tips would be gratefully received.

 

[MattH1973]

have a look at mine and Freesters threads in the "brewdays" section for more of the basics - but in summary my advice is keep it simple. The scum at the top is never an issue in my experience. And I now dont bother with secondary. Just let the primary fermentation do its thing - you know its finished when the bubbles stop and the liquid starts to clear. The you test with a hydrometer its fermented all the way and bottle once it has.

If you keep adding juice there will be more sugar to ferment and this will delay things. It also unnecessarily exposes the liquid to air and risk oxidisation. Once its fermenting you can leave it alone knowing a layer of CO2 is protecting the liquid.

Final point - an even temp is more important than a warm one - but you are right nothing will happen when its freezing....

hope this helps.

 

[Adam apple]

Hi, yes that is a big help. Funnily enough I think I've browsed some of you and freester's threads before. Keeping it simple sounds good to me, the youtube vid which got me going on this couldn't have made it seem anymore simple however following a few late nights reading the internet I honestly never imagined making cider would be so anxiety provoking.

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[Chippy_Tea]

Proper cider, no cutting the bad bits out or cleaning anything required

 

[Adam apple]

Proper cider, no cutting the bad bits out or cleaning anything required

Excellent, do I get extra points? I didn't cut anything, the carboys and airlocks which got a rinse with bleachy water but everything else was washed in a stream

 

[DavieC]

Hi Adam, it sounds like you're doing ok with your cider.You will find it improves a lot with ageing and conditioning but first time I made some ,the bulk of it didn't get the chance because I couldn't wait to drink it!.I ferment mine in a plastic Fermentation bucket and then after a couple of weeks when it's finished I transfer (rack) into Demijohns with airlocks and leave to clear and age before bottling.I don't use any campden tablets, finings or stabiliser.

 

[An Ankoù]

Hi Adam,
All sounds good. Buy a proper hydrometer from amazon UK or somewhere. The reading at the end of fermentation will be around 1000. It sounds as though it has finished fermenting so how are you going to package it? I bottle mine in old champagne style bottles.
I pretty much agree with what DavieC is saying, above. There's not much that can go wrong with cider. I wouldnt top up with supermarket apple juice, though. Just press a few more apples..
I've bottled up my October batch already and I've gathered enough late apples for a couple more gallons to press tomorrow.

 

[An Ankoù]

Any tips would be gratefully received.

If wife's patience is wearing thin, then time to get shot of afementioned and invest in a bigger orchard with a cider barn.

 

[Adam apple]

Thanks chaps, This is exciting, I keep trying to keep in mind the family we bought our patch of land off who made wine and all sorts of stuff for hundreds of years with out the internet to scare them.

Still seeing the odd bubble in the airlocks but I'll get them down from the shelf and remove the baskets over the next few days and see how if it's cleared up at all. I keep all my beer bottles as you get deposit return 13 cents a bottle out here so will buy a crown cap machine and bottle into them. As I have a couple more carboys I might rack half and age longer to see how it turns out, then bottle some straight away.

I actually planted a couple more apple trees last week along with plum, cherry and walnut, the long term plan when I've fixed up the barn is to get a still, last year we had 250 kilos of pears which my father in law made pear brandy with, home made booze is quite a big deal out here as I said in the first post. Apples can be had for free wild at most roadsides but at a push they're only 49 cents per kilo in the market in October anyway.

To be fair my wife's been pretty good about it really, waking up to a yeasty bubby mess oozing down the kitchen cupboards a couple of weeks back cost me some brownie points but now they've quietened down I think we're good again.

 

[DavieC]

If you want sparkling cider I carbonate with 5g white sugar per 500ml bottle.I had one last night that I bottled last year.Tasted great to me but my wife always says it's still a bit sharp but thats how I like it.sounds like you have plenty of options for wines and ciders.Great stuff.

 

[Adam apple]

That

If you want sparkling cider I carbonate with 5g white sugar per 500ml bottle.I had one last night that I bottled last year.Tasted great to me but my wife always says it's still a bit sharp but thats how I like it.sounds like you have plenty of options for wines and ciders.Great stuff. View attachment 58026

When I saw this photo come through on Sunday night I very nearly had to drop everything and head out to the pub. Will be trying a few bottled with sugar and keeping fingers crossed it ends up looking like this too.

So I had a peak under the baskets and all yeast has dropped to the bottom now, they're far from clear and one has a fair bit of apple floating at the top (I think this was the last one I filled which got the dregs) but there's basically no airlock activity now. So I ordered the crown cap tool and some caps today and picked up the hydrometer/mustometer from the shop, I don't recognise the measurements and can't read the instructions but it's calibrated to 20 degrees. I'll try post a photo here and someone can hopefully advise on if it's the right thing or not and what reading I should be looking for on it.

 

[Adam apple]

The writing translates to "Mustomer 10-30 fermentable sugars in kg/hl 20deg C

On the other side there is a scale of 10-30in increments of 1

Advice earlier in the post was to buy from amazon uk but it's a bit haphazard getting anything sent over from the uk at the moment so thought I'd take a gamble on something local but from what I see on the web looks like I've bought something with the wrong range? Brix scale? From what I gather having not taken a reading at the start I've kind of missed the point taking a reading now anyway so maybe will skip this stage.

 

[DavieC]

Hi Adam, sorry can't help with the hydrometer, it hasn't got the same scales as mine, it might be worth asking about it in the general brewing forum,I'm sure someone will decipher it. Your cider will end up crystal clear given time,the clearer it is before it's bottled will mean less sediment in the bottle but it's not really anything to worry about if it's still a bit cloudy, I'm pretty sure I've read that the dregs are a good source of vitamin B.

 

[Adam apple]

Hi Davie, No worries about the hydrometer, according to wikipedia it has the brix scale which is used in wine making. I skipped it and actually bottle some up this weekend. No doubt next year I'll be a bit better prepared and taking a reading after pressing. Interestingly the carboys had clarified at different rates so some is still quite cloudy and some quite clear already, I'm assuming that's due to different apple varieties as had buckets of apples from different tress and I filled the carboys directly from the press, next year maybe I'll press everything into one big container then fill the carboys from that for more consistency. Bottling up was fun, few lessons for next year including better done late in the day unless spending the day half cut is acceptable as it turns out to be inevitable drinking a fair bit during the process. I ran out of bottles so have ten litres racked to a secondary carboy and will leave that a couple more weeks to see if it improves any. I added half a teaspoon of sugar to around half of them so will see what I end up with in a couple of weeks. From what I drank yesterday I'm pretty pleased with the results so far, well worth the effort. Anyway, I need to crack on with drinking some local Slovak and Czech beer for the next couple of weeks to save some empties for the last 10 litres. Oh yeah and thanks re dregs, I was temped to give it a try but it invoked childhood memories of taking brewers yeast tablets at my mothers insistence as a child.

 

[DavieC]

The dregs in the bottle are tasty sometimes . If your batches of cider are from separate trees you will probably find blending them together gives a better tasting cider as a good mix of Apple types is usually favourable. Glad to hear you've embraced the whole cider making routine including the important part of drinking the produce at the first opportunity, can't beat it.