While enjoying my Coopers IPA I got the itch to brew something, again. I was already stocked up on beer so I thought I'd make some more Weisswine, and experiment a bit more this time.
Sue and I made a trip to Costco and I bought 14 liters of juice to ferment into alcohol-filled-tasty-goodness; 8 liters of Treetop apple juice and about 7 liters of Kirkland apple peach passionfruit. I grabbed the apple because I'd wanted to make something hard-apple since I saw a recipe for Apfelwein floating around on a few forums. Once I saw the APPF juice Sue said that it sounded tasty as well, so I bought both.
The recipe:
Hard Apple
- 4 liters of Treetop apple juice
- 2cups white table sugar
- 1 cup boiled raisin slurry
- 1/2 sachet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
APPF
- 2.87 liters of apple peach passionfruit juice
- 700 ml of Treetop apple juice
- 1 cup boiled raisin slurry
- the other 1/2 of the sachet of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
I went with different juices for these because the BIOES juice I used last time was ok, but not that great, and these are sold in bulk. I also wanted to make something that actually tasted good. I added a bunch of sugar to each one to up my ABV, but I varied the amount slightly to see how it affects the taste. More importantly, this time I had proper yeast! Bread yeast did the trick just fine last time but a lot of the off flavors and dryness were probably primarily due to that as well as the high fermentation temperature. Bread yeast is not made for making booze.
Lalvin EC-1118, however, is made exactly for that.
I opted for this particular strand of yeast because I'd also like to make some mead at some point and a lot of recipes call for it. It's also a champagne yeast so it will ferment out to lower final gravities and provide more booze for the buck. Score!
Making the Hard Apple went just fine as I put everything together, a much simpler process and not as stressful as when I make beer. With my wine I have a much wider margin for error because the materials are readily available.
But, again, I got all giddy and hooray-I'm-brewing-something-again and pitched my yeast into my Hard Apple before taking out a slug for a gravity reading. Sigh. But, I've subsequently made a duplicate batch just so I could measure the original gravity (listed below).
Once I had the Hard Apple all squared away I went about getting the APPF ready for it's own yeast party. This time, I was sure to pour off 120ml or so to check the gravity before pitching the rest of my yeast. But, not everything went to plan. Again. Murphy and his goddamn law, I'd bottle him if I ever saw him.
The stoppers I bought while I was in the states were a bit too large for the mouth of the glass jugs I use for fermentation. I could get the stopper into the bottle, but the juice/sanitizer on each acted enough to lubricate the opening and the damn thing kept popping out. The stopper for the Hard Apple had taken a few tries to get in, but it eventually stayed.
This other one was a stubborn bastard.
I swore a lot and admitted defeat, for the moment, and stalked out of the kitchen. For the short term I grabbed a condom and used that, just like I did for my first batches of inmate wine, and that did just fine until the condom dried out after two days in primary. A dried out condom standing up like a big CO2 boner over my wine was not a pleasing sight. So, I had another crack at putting the stopper in. This time it stayed. Fucker.
I also thought for these two that I'd do more with the temperature regulation as my juices fermented. I bet you never thought you'd see me write that:as my juices fermented.
Ew.
Anyway, I grabbed a couple old t-shirts that I never wore and fit them over the bottles. I then placed both into shallow plastic trays and wetted the shirts, filling the tray with water. This strategy employs the power of evaporation to keep the temperatures of your brew lower than the ambient temperature, which is usually pretty high this time of year. The water evaporates away from the shirt and brings some of the heat with it. More water is then wicked up by the shirt from the tray and the process repeats itself. I also aimed a fan at both bottles to quicken the evaporation.
Unfortunately I had no way to really check the temperature of my brew as it fermented over the course of a month because I didn't want to have to undo the miles of tape around the stoppers and have them pop out. Sticky thermometers would have been great but I had none.
An hour after I had finished and cleaned up the kitchen I went to check on the brews. Not that they needed it, but I like to check my projects out quite a lot as they progress. Ask Sue. Checking in on my fermentables becomes a part of daily life.
Even though it was only 60 minutes after I had pitched my yeast I already saw activity! My yeasty pals sure love that boiled raisin soup I make for them. I highly recommend this as an adjunct for similar projects you may have as it seems to really work.
At any rate, when I bottled both brews the other day the temperature for each was several degress lower than the ambient temp. So I guess my plan worked. Huzzah!
I put each brew went into 1L bottles for a few days or weeks to age. Most of it went into these cheapy colored swing-top jobbies that I bought at Carrefour, so we'll see how that turns out. Half of the Hard Apple went into some much nicer swing-top bottles from a local brewery.
Half of each batch also had a couple carbonation drops added to the bottles to see if I can get them to carbonate. Then I'll have tasty goodness with bubbles!
I tasted a bit from each batch after I bottled it and did final gravity readings and I was pretty impressed. I'd put the APPF ahead of the Hard Apple for taste and such, but the Hard Apple will be the one to drink for a headier experience. Can't wait to share some this stuff and get some outside opinions.
Happy brewing, chums.