We want a nice, strong apfelwein, so I'm going to keep feeding this one, hopefully with sugars that will impart some nice residual flavors that will work well with the flavor of the apples. Honeycrisp apple juice worked well the last time we used it, so I want that to be a substantial component of this cider, too. And I want to use the cider yeast that Xenia got such good results with in batch 014. I'm going to call this batch Amerikanischer Apfelwein, at least until a better name becomes apparent.

Ingredients in this batch

2018-01-03_22_58_15_2
Juice for batch 092.
  • 2 gallons Kroger unfiltered 100% apple juice from concentrate.
  • 13½ cups Tree Top Fresh Pressed honeycrisp apple juice.
  • 11.05 oz. Kirkland clover honey.
  • 2 lb. corn sugar.
  • 4 oz. Aunt Betty's Blackstrap molasses.
  • ¼ tsp. Wyeast beer nutrient (note: no SNA on this batch).
  • 1 pouch White Labs WLP775 English cider yeast
  • 1 lb. dark brown sugar, added 15 January 2018.
  • 8 oz. dark brown sugar, added 2 February 2018.
  • 5.5 oz. Buckhorn Canyon Ranch sage blossom honey, added 2 February 2018.
  • 8 oz. dark brown sugar, added 8 February 2018.
  • 1 oz. Hungarian oak cubes, washed in hot tap water, added on 7 May 2018.

Sanitized. Mixed the various sugars into the apple juice one half-gallon of juice at a time by pouring some juice into the three-gallon carboy, putting some sugar into the half-gallon juice container, and shaking vigorously to mix. Repeated as long as there was sugar and juice. Poured the juice from one three-gallon carboy into another, through a funnel, just to be sure the liquid was evenly mixed and to aerate a bit more. Pitched yeast and waited for fermentation to take off.

Brew date: 3 January 2018.
Original gravity: 1.082. (But we're treating this as if the starting gravity were 1.120 for ABV math, due to later sugar additions.)
Bottling date: 14 June 2017
Final gravity: 1.010.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 15½%.

Yield:

  • 1 x 1 L swing-top bottle
  • 2 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 x 750 mL blue swing-top bottle
  • 1 x 750 mL beer bottle
  • 1 x 375 mL wine bottle
  • 3 x 500 mL wine bottles
  • 2 x 500 mL swing-top beer bottles
  • 10 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 10 oz. leftover hydrometer/tasting cider

Total yield: Approx 356 fl. oz., just over 10.5 L, or just over 2¾ gallons.

Notes and observations

  • 2018-01-04T12:53:00: No evidence of fermentation.
  • 2018-01-04T23:22:00: There is enough carbon dioxide being produced in the carboyto raise the airlock cap slightly.
  • 2018-01-05T12:11:00: The airlock is bubbling steadily.
  • 2018-01-15T20:01: Added one pound of brown sugar to the fermenting cider by removing about a quart of fermenting cider from the carboy, gradually mixing a few ounces of sugar into small portions of it, and then pouring it back in. Wound up leaving out approx. 4 oz. of fermenting cider (to which no new sugar had yet been added) at this point to make room in the small carboy for the volume of the sugar. The fermenting cider sample from the carboy is, by the way, delicious.
  • 2018-01-19T19:17: Cider is still fermenting vigorously.
  • 2018-02-02T23:51: Fermentation has slowed down a great deal, so I added more honey and brown sugar.
  • 2018-02-08T19:34: Added 8 oz. of brown sugar dissolved in fermenting cider. Cider immediately outgassed and overflowed, suggesting that just maybe the sugar crystals were not sufficiently dissolved in the liquid.
  • 2018-02-08T19:51: Carboy is back on the shelf. Airlock is still bubbling merrily along.
  • 2018-05-07T19:07: Measured gravity: 1.014. Tastes stupid good. So much body and lots of honeycrisp in the nose. Added an ounce of Hungarian oak cubes, which might help to soak up some of the residual hot flavors, and will hopefully push out the body a little.
  • 2018-06-14T21:09: Xenia bottled the batch, yielding almost 3 gallons of nearly 16% cider. And wow, it's really really good: that honeycrisp really comes forward in the nose, and it tastes incredibly appley, and the sugars give it a deep, rich background taste. We're going to be making more of this. Soon, too.