Cider Digest #0047

Published in

· 8 months ago

Subject: Cider Digest #47 Sat Oct 19 11:00:05 EDT 1991 
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 91 11:00:07 EDT 
From: cider-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu (Are you SURE you want to send it HERE?) 

Cider Digest #47          Sat Oct 19 11:00:06 EDT 1991 
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues 
Jay Hersh, Digest Coordinator 

Contents: 
  Botched batch (Chad Epifanio) 

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Date: Fri, 18 Oct 91 16:07:53 PDT 
From: chad@mpl.ucsd.edu (Chad Epifanio) 
Subject: Botched batch 

Hello 

This tall tale is about a botched batch of cider.  I wanted to make good 
one, as my last year's batch was sickenly sweet and wimpy.  Here is 
my new batch: 

5 gal fresh cider(various blends) 
3 lbs mesquite honey 
3 lbs brown sugar 
2 lbs white sugar 
1 lb unpreserved rasins 
5 t yeast nutrient 
Montrachet yeast(from 1 qt. mead starter) 

Well, it bubbled and fumed for 3 weeks.  Made the whole garage smell 
funky.  I racked it after three weeks, and tasted.  It was VERY 
alcoholic.  So much so that it burned my mouth.  Also very unbalanced. 
Dry as a bone in the desert heat.  I thought I could add a lot of sugar, 
making it so alcoholic to kill the yeast, and leaving a bit of residual 
sweetness.  I musta got a package of bad-ass yeast.  I didn't measure  
SG or FG(damn), but I estimate the alcohol content to be over 15%. 
What to do?!! 

To be honest, I paniced.  I grabbed another 3lbs of mesquite honey,  
boiled it in cider, cooled, and plopped it into the fermenter.  To 
balance the expected sweetness, I added a cup of lmon juice to raise 
the pH(tartnss?).  Weak activity flaired up for a day, then stopped dead. 
That was two weeks ago.  I sampled a bit last night, and it was good. 
Not great, but good.  The added honey and lemon juice balanced the  
overwhelming alcohol.  It smells great too.  There is still a bit 
of astringent aftertaste, but I hope that will go away with age. 
I guess what I've created is effectivly cyser, but at least I salvaged 
the batch. 

chad 
chad%mpl@ucsd.edu 

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