Batch 014: One for MY FACE
Our first straight-up cider, with more of Perricone Farms' wonderful apple juice and a bit of tannin, which should hopefully contribute a bit of British cider mouthfeel. We're going to call batch 014 One for MY FACE, because no pun is ever too cheesy for me.
Ingredients in this batch
- 1 gal pasteurized apple juice with absolutely no additives, from Perricone Farms in Newport Beach.
- ½ tsp. each of Valley Brewers yeast nutrient and yeast energizer.
- ¼ tsp Valley Brewers wine tannin.
- About ⅓ of a packet of White Labs WLP775 English cider yeast.
Yield:
- 1 x 22 oz. bottle
- 1 x 12 oz. bottles
- Total: about 83% of a gallon.
I left the apple juice sitting out for a while to get closer to room temperature, but it was likely only around 50°F. I assembled the juice, nutrient, energizer, and tannin in the carboy, then aerated the must for a few minutes and added the yeast straight from the sleeve.
Original gravity: 1.050.
Final gravity: ??
Estimated ABV: ??
Observations
- 2016-07-10T19:00:00: Despite my low-effort process last night, the cider is fermenting beautifully!
- 2016-07-28 or so: We tasted this cider to find that it had fermented completely dry. Current SG is 0.997 at 80°F. Which sounds like a great idea, but actually tastes pretty sad, in part perhaps because this just used dessert apple juice with little personality. We're going to let it sit a few more weeks, then heavily consider backsweetening.
- 2016-09-18T15:00:00: I did wind up backsweetening this cider with about a cup of white table sugar, which made a massive improvement. I bottled this cider a couple of weeks ago and am currently enjoying my first bottle; it's nicely tart with a bit of pucker, likely from the tannin. As usual, I completely spaced on taking a final gravity reading, but my highly scientific guesstimate is it's around 6%.