I’m baaaaaaaack!
Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s been awhile. Mikey hasn’t stopped reminding me. It’s mostly Mikey’s fault I haven’t been around in awhile. As Mikey mentioned, brewing slowed down a bit over the summer, so there wasn’t much to write up. Although I pushed through the heat and still did a couple a brews, giving Mikey an opportunity to write reviews for things like the Red Dog Pale Ale 2, since Mikey was slack, I had nothing to review. Unfortunately I just got out of the habit… because of Mikey.
Anyway, nearly a year ago I mixed some apple juice with some liquid malt; I called it a malted cider, some call it a graft. Either way it’s pretty tasty.
The recipe was about the same as last time, just with different apples this time. Last time I got some organic apples, this time it was just a whole bunch of Pink Lady apples, they worked out pretty well.
I also changed up the method somewhat…
- First, all the apples were chopped and let to sit for a few hours. This just softened them up a tiny bit and I’ve been told this gives a slightly sweeter cider (otherwise it’s way too dry).
- Next, we juiced all the apples, as would be expected! In the pot and since there is a bit of froth (and eventual evaporation), it’s hard to tell how much juice there is. So we didn’t add the malt right away.
- We gave the juice a 10-15 minute boil to kill any nasties.
- This went into the fermenter.
- Golden light liquid malt was then added at a ratio of half a cup per litre of juice.
- We then topped the fermtenter up with cold water at a ratio of one litre of water to one litre of juice.
- Pitch some wine yeast and done!
It’s a pretty simple recipe! All the chopping and juicing of the apples took a fair while. It also made one hell of a mess but it was a bit of fun.
In the end we got a OSG of 1.053, which we were pretty happy about! Considering we’ll probably get a pretty low final gravity, since the fructose in the apples will ferment almost completely, this cider should have some kick!
Let’s see what happens…
-Chas
We make home brew 