Cider, round 3 is approaching
Crab apples that I found along my bike commute. In a public space, no less!
This coming weekend will be cider-making, round 3. I lent Nat West of Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider my grinder so that he could breeze through several tons of apples for a commercial venture, and in exchange he’s providing me with some apples for another batch of cider. This one will be a blend of 25% English cider apple mix, 25% Newtown Pippens, 25% Esopus Spitzenburgs, and 25% Winesap. Oh yeah!
Of course, me being me, I had to go out and pick some crab apples with my co-worker to add to the mix! We got about 98 lbs of them, and “them” is—to the best of my knowledge—a bunch of Hewes’/Virginia crab apples. Well, I’m not certain of that, but they’re very tasty and juicy! In fact, I’d say they’re probably something else altogether. Also a bit scabby, but that matters not for cider. Especially since they’re not wormy at all! I guess this’ll make it about a 20-20-20-20-20% blend with the new ones.
The previous batch has been fermenting along well at around 14-15 °C (56-60 °F) for the past couple of weeks. It’s just about fermented out fully, so I’ll be racking it along to the secondary soon enough. Of course, the final gravity for the last two ciders was 1.002 and 1.001, respectively, which leads to to believe that the hydrometer I am using is a bit off (the final gravity for a cider should be around 0.998). I guess some calibration is in order soon! Good thing I chaptalized the last one to a safe level. I guess the alternative to calibration is to just always chaptalize to a high, safe level of sugar, like around 1.100.
Data, for show:
Fermentation progress for cider #2. Two weeks is a nice amount of time for full fermentation.
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