defender90
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Morning All-
First post, so a bit of introduction to start.
For the last few years I've been a total seat of the pants cider maker. My first batch was a slapdash maneuver in Vermont involving a half and half mix of wild apples juiced myself with a couple of extra gallons of fresh juice from the orchard down the road. It turned out magnificently - clear, semidry cider that's slightly effervescent. Literally knew nothing about it, just put juice in the carboy, bubble, vapor lock, bottle, store, no aggro.
Second batch a year later was three times as big - 15 gallons from Champlain Farms on the western edge of Vermont. Same basic haphazard method, but this one's been a problem child. We can get into that later after I get home this weekend and check it out (moved to NYC, so haven't been able to monitor this batch). My overall goal is to produce a traditional New England style cider.
Given the inconsistency in these batches, I decided to start tinkering on a smaller scale down here in New York so that I could hopefully fix my stuck Vermont batch and come up with a documented method I like so I can apply it to the bigger capacity operation up north and lay down some real cider futures next year. I took a meticulous approach this time and used three guides, Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea, Making The Best Apple Cider by Annie Proulx, and a couple of dusty old books from the family library in Vermont. I wrote down everything I did in a journal along with accurate readings.
My intention here is to state the basic problem, and to call on your collective expertise to figure out what the issue is. I was pretty careful about my measurements, so hopefully you can help!
The problem batch is three gallons of what Iâm told is raw, unpasteurized juice from an orchard in the Hudson River Valley, comprised of a mixture of Cortland, Empire, MacIntosh, Gala and Honeycrisp apples. After measuring PH and SG, decided on the basis of Andrew Lea's table to add two Campden tablets per gallon. Initial SG and PH readings were 1.051 and 3.4 respectively. I added the tablets whole into the plastic gallon jugs the juice came in and put them back in the fridge (about 12 hours). At the same time the tablets were dissolving, I made a 5 gallon batch of Star-San and washed everything thoroughly, coating with sanitizer, setting aside some of the solution in a spray bottle and letting everything dry out overnight.
In the morning I verified everything was dry and the tablets were dissolved. I added one cup of granulated sugar to each gallon jug and agitated the jugs to dissolve. SG was boosted to 1.068 giving an estimated final ABV of around 9%, bang on what I was looking for. I added 1.5 gallons to the carboy, pitched a full 5g packet of Lalvin 71B-1122 after rehydrating for 15 minutes in water at 107.2F, then added the remaining 1.5 gallons. The temp of the cider was 19.1C 67.1F, and ambient temp in the kitchen was 72F.
The cider was placed on a rimmed baking sheet on a milk crate by the window in the garden level of the house. I topped it up with fresh juice (which had only been UV treated) right to the rim. One week later, no evidence of fermentation at all, except the level of juice going down by an inch or so, and the cider was sitting on about 3/4 of an inch of lees. SG reading was 1.067, a change of .001. Temperature in the room fluctuated between 70 and 55F over the week, and the window was open about half of the time. I live on a leafy, quiet residential street in Brooklyn 100 yards from Prospect Park, so very light traffic only and the window is about 20 feet from the street. Given this, I theorized that the juice may have been too cold out of the fridge and shocked the yeast. The current cider temp (per the sticky thermometer I applied to the jug) was 68F. I blew through a length of sterilized hose for 15 minutes to aerate the juice. I pitched again, using the same yeast and hydration method. I wiped the jug, shielded the top and gave it a spritz of sanitizing solution.
Another week went by with no visible sign of fermentation. The level went down by an inch in the neck of the carboy again, so I topped up once with UV treated juice. At the end of the second week the SG was at 1.067 - no change. This last time I didn't aerate, used slightly cooler water to rehydrate the yeast and let it sit for a full 20 minutes until it had developed a full layer of foam, then pitched the third time. It's been another four days and I've seen no change or activity whatsoever.
Any ideas? I have no clue what's gone wrong here! Thanks to all for the help and advice.
Adam
First post, so a bit of introduction to start.
For the last few years I've been a total seat of the pants cider maker. My first batch was a slapdash maneuver in Vermont involving a half and half mix of wild apples juiced myself with a couple of extra gallons of fresh juice from the orchard down the road. It turned out magnificently - clear, semidry cider that's slightly effervescent. Literally knew nothing about it, just put juice in the carboy, bubble, vapor lock, bottle, store, no aggro.
Second batch a year later was three times as big - 15 gallons from Champlain Farms on the western edge of Vermont. Same basic haphazard method, but this one's been a problem child. We can get into that later after I get home this weekend and check it out (moved to NYC, so haven't been able to monitor this batch). My overall goal is to produce a traditional New England style cider.
Given the inconsistency in these batches, I decided to start tinkering on a smaller scale down here in New York so that I could hopefully fix my stuck Vermont batch and come up with a documented method I like so I can apply it to the bigger capacity operation up north and lay down some real cider futures next year. I took a meticulous approach this time and used three guides, Craft Cider Making by Andrew Lea, Making The Best Apple Cider by Annie Proulx, and a couple of dusty old books from the family library in Vermont. I wrote down everything I did in a journal along with accurate readings.
My intention here is to state the basic problem, and to call on your collective expertise to figure out what the issue is. I was pretty careful about my measurements, so hopefully you can help!
The problem batch is three gallons of what Iâm told is raw, unpasteurized juice from an orchard in the Hudson River Valley, comprised of a mixture of Cortland, Empire, MacIntosh, Gala and Honeycrisp apples. After measuring PH and SG, decided on the basis of Andrew Lea's table to add two Campden tablets per gallon. Initial SG and PH readings were 1.051 and 3.4 respectively. I added the tablets whole into the plastic gallon jugs the juice came in and put them back in the fridge (about 12 hours). At the same time the tablets were dissolving, I made a 5 gallon batch of Star-San and washed everything thoroughly, coating with sanitizer, setting aside some of the solution in a spray bottle and letting everything dry out overnight.
In the morning I verified everything was dry and the tablets were dissolved. I added one cup of granulated sugar to each gallon jug and agitated the jugs to dissolve. SG was boosted to 1.068 giving an estimated final ABV of around 9%, bang on what I was looking for. I added 1.5 gallons to the carboy, pitched a full 5g packet of Lalvin 71B-1122 after rehydrating for 15 minutes in water at 107.2F, then added the remaining 1.5 gallons. The temp of the cider was 19.1C 67.1F, and ambient temp in the kitchen was 72F.
The cider was placed on a rimmed baking sheet on a milk crate by the window in the garden level of the house. I topped it up with fresh juice (which had only been UV treated) right to the rim. One week later, no evidence of fermentation at all, except the level of juice going down by an inch or so, and the cider was sitting on about 3/4 of an inch of lees. SG reading was 1.067, a change of .001. Temperature in the room fluctuated between 70 and 55F over the week, and the window was open about half of the time. I live on a leafy, quiet residential street in Brooklyn 100 yards from Prospect Park, so very light traffic only and the window is about 20 feet from the street. Given this, I theorized that the juice may have been too cold out of the fridge and shocked the yeast. The current cider temp (per the sticky thermometer I applied to the jug) was 68F. I blew through a length of sterilized hose for 15 minutes to aerate the juice. I pitched again, using the same yeast and hydration method. I wiped the jug, shielded the top and gave it a spritz of sanitizing solution.
Another week went by with no visible sign of fermentation. The level went down by an inch in the neck of the carboy again, so I topped up once with UV treated juice. At the end of the second week the SG was at 1.067 - no change. This last time I didn't aerate, used slightly cooler water to rehydrate the yeast and let it sit for a full 20 minutes until it had developed a full layer of foam, then pitched the third time. It's been another four days and I've seen no change or activity whatsoever.
Any ideas? I have no clue what's gone wrong here! Thanks to all for the help and advice.
Adam
