mixed fruit cider

chris2286

okay i think we're all familiar with kopparberg cider i was wondering if someone has tried to copy or somehow get even close to the mixed fruit or mixed berry cider.
bare in mind i already heard about magnums mixed fruit but i want to know if someone has managed to make it from fruit juice or fruits or whatever cause i love that drink but its expensive

Khannie

I tried making apple and raspberry a few times. It didn't taste like I was expecting. Have a few suggestions which I'll pass on when I'm at a computer.

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

I tried making apple and raspberry a few times. It didn't taste like I was expecting. Have a few suggestions which I'll pass on when I'm at a computer.

when u said it didnt taste like what you expected is that in a good way or bad. cheers looking forward to seeing some new recipes lol

Khannie

chris2286 wrote: »

when u said it didnt taste like what you expected is that in a good way or bad. cheers looking forward to seeing some new recipes lol

Well...let me put it like this: My wife urges me to make more of it. So it tasted nice. HOWEVER! (it's a big however :pac:) If you taste the blended apple and raspberry juice it is utterly divine. That's really the only description I can give it. The finished product tasted nothing like it.

During primary, which was very active, there was a thick layer of "stuff" at the top of the bucket. That's grand, I got over it. I think the active primary takes away from the raspberry taste though. Now I really want to get that apple and raspberry juice taste in a cider, but I'm not a skilled brewer, so I've given it a bit of thought and here's what I've come up with....

My gut tells me that primary is stripping out the bulk of the raspberry taste (I used a lot of raspberries - they're cheap in the frozen section in lidl). Based on that I think I'll be adding the raspberries after primary. I have a few ideas on that front that I'll be testing out:

1) make a raspberry syrup by boiling up the raspberries and add it to secondary. Wait for it to finish fermenting, prime with more raspberry syrup (depending on how it works out)
2) Just add blended raspberries to secondary
3) Add raspberry jam (with seeds removed) to secondary

Now last night I primed 2 bottles of apple with a raspberry syrup that I got while on holidays in France. The problem with this is that it doesn't have a very high fruit content and also priming is only a small amount so it wont affect the flavour much on its own. It should give me an idea whether the principle is sound though.

I have a bag of mixed berries in the freezer (again from Lidl). I think these will give a nice flavour too if I manage to get the process right.

So there you have it. It's probably not very useful to you at this stage, but I'm working towards getting a decent berry cider that approaches (or exceeds) commercial ones together.

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

Well...let me put it like this: My wife urges me to make more of it. So it tasted nice. HOWEVER! (it's a big however :pac:) If you taste the blended apple and raspberry juice it is utterly divine. That's really the only description I can give it. The finished product tasted nothing like it.

During primary, which was very active, there was a thick layer of "stuff" at the top of the bucket. That's grand, I got over it. I think the active primary takes away from the raspberry taste though. Now I really want to get that apple and raspberry juice taste in a cider, but I'm not a skilled brewer, so I've given it a bit of thought and here's what I've come up with....

My gut tells me that primary is stripping out the bulk of the raspberry taste (I used a lot of raspberries - they're cheap in the frozen section in lidl). Based on that I think I'll be adding the raspberries after primary. I have a few ideas on that front that I'll be testing out:

1) make a raspberry syrup by boiling up the raspberries and add it to secondary. Wait for it to finish fermenting, prime with more raspberry syrup (depending on how it works out)
2) Just add blended raspberries to secondary
3) Add raspberry jam (with seeds removed) to secondary

Now last night I primed 2 bottles of apple with a raspberry syrup that I got while on holidays in France. The problem with this is that it doesn't have a very high fruit content and also priming is only a small amount so it wont affect the flavour much on its own. It should give me an idea whether the principle is sound though.

I have a bag of mixed berries in the freezer (again from Lidl). I think these will give a nice flavour too if I manage to get the process right.

So there you have it. It's probably not very useful to you at this stage, but I'm working towards getting a decent berry cider that approaches (or exceeds) commercial ones together.

ya know imma gonna give this a go and see what i can get outta it and maybe the 2 of us can put our ideas towards each other to try find this special recipe thanks for starting the blueprint

Khannie

My plan has worked a treat.

So which one are you going with? berry syrup for secondary?

I gave this even more thought today - mostly as to how the commercial folks do it. I reckon they brew the cider, kill the yeast then add the berry syrup and sugar and artificially carbonate. I might attempt this at some point too.

Khannie

Yet another idea....

Just make apple cider, then add some home made berry syrup at pouring time. May try this myself since I have an apple batch just gone into the bottle.

edit: Did some googling. Another option that might work well is to ferment out the apple cider, then liquidise the berries and strain them through a cheesecloth into the fermented cider. This could even be your priming, depending on the sugar content of the berries.

Apparently boiling (when making the syrup) may cause a pectin haze. You could get past this by adding some pectolase (which I happen to have).

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

Yet another idea....

Just make apple cider, then add some home made berry syrup at pouring time. May try this myself since I have an apple batch just gone into the bottle.

edit: Did some googling. Another option that might work well is to ferment out the apple cider, then liquidise the berries and strain them through a cheesecloth into the fermented cider. This could even be your priming, depending on the sugar content of the berries.

Apparently boiling (when making the syrup) may cause a pectin haze. You could get past this by adding some pectolase (which I happen to have).

your starting to explode now with ideas eh ha ha i get like that 2.

i tell ya the reason why i added this thread is cause iv tried so many methods and failed rather too strong not sweet enough no carbonation ya know yourself but at the moment i think im onto something.

ingredients.

8 litres apple juice
1 litre red grape juice
1 kg white tesco sugar
water
3 level teaspoons of youngs dried active yeast

equipment
30 litre fermenter with bottom tap
airlock
a big spoon

everything was sterilized i turned on the kettle and started adding all the juice to the fermenter. i then added the boiled water roughly a 1.5litres doesnt matter really how much. then added the kg sugar the hot water help it dissolve in no time. then i added cool tap water up to the 16 litre mark and left it sit to room temperature which was 16-18c so i added the yeast and covered my fermenter and wrapped it up with a blanket and lit the fire its brewing now for nearly a week rapidly and i had a taste (best thing about the bottom tap is you dont have to open it as it leaves out gas but its still too sweet so another week i say it be perfect but not like kopparberg but still lovely.

the red grape juice really does over take the apple juice even tho its an 1/8 of what apple juice went in it.
i might suggest cutting the sugar to about half or the most 3/4 kg or maybe adding more water to about 18-20 litres.

chris2286

i think your more on key i found this http://kopparberg.co.uk/cider it tells you the raspberries and blackcurrants are mixed with the all ready made cider so all your short in your recipe is just the blackcurrants imma gonna give this a go on wens when i collect me dole ha ha ha

redser7

Adding berries is done like this when making homemade wine to simulate the fruit flavours that wine grapes can give off naturally after fermentation. So your on a winner there, been reading up a lot about it lately. Putting them in early does indeed 'blow off' the flavours and aromas. For juice extraction, going from frozen is key as it breaks down the cell walls. I was recommended to defrost the berries in a bucket over night with a layer of sugar over them. This will help extract the juice also. Then squeeze the juice through muslin, but dont totally ring them out them or you could add to much pectin through for even for pectolaise to handle and end up with a haze. Add it late in the ferment is what I was told, not after the yeast is fully dead, but then this was wine so maybe it is different?? You would need to account for the extra sugar in your recipe. Must start a cider

chris2286

redser7 wrote: »

Adding berries is done like this when making homemade wine to simulate the fruit flavours that wine grapes can give off naturally after fermentation. So your on a winner there, been reading up a lot about it lately. Putting them in early does indeed 'blow off' the flavours and aromas. For juice extraction, going from frozen is key as it breaks down the cell walls. I was recommended to defrost the berries in a bucket over night with a layer of sugar over them. This will help extract the juice also. Then squeeze the juice through muslin, but dont totally ring them out them or you could add to much pectin through for even for pectolaise to handle and end up with a haze. Add it late in the ferment is what I was told, not after the yeast is fully dead, but then this was wine so maybe it is different?? You would need to account for the extra sugar in your recipe. Must start a cider

thats great info redser thanks for that i really hope we can get somewhere near or even beat the real thing this is obviously gonna take a few months than the easy hard apple cider way but im willing thanks again

redser7

No worries, havn't tried it out yet but seems to get great results, people talking about it making the difference between good and great

Khannie

Nice find Chris and nice post redser. OK, so in summary here's what we're looking at: (someone shout if I've missed anything)

Brew apple cider. Let it fully ferment out (so bone dry / no sugar left).
Take frozen berries of your choice, defrost them overnight with a thin layer of sugar on them.
Pass them through a muslin bag into the cider / squeeze but not too hard. This is maybe enough to prime?
Add some pectolase if you have it. Not essential.
Add some sweetener (my preference is for 8-10 sweetener tablets per litre - this sounds like a lot, but it's roughly the sugar equivalent that the commercial ciders have). The tesco "everyday value" sweetener or the lidl brand tablets are fine here. Splenda is best, just more expensive.
Bottle.
Wait a few weeks.
Party. \o/


I'm gonna try this out between now and christmas. Think I'll try it with a cider kit or turbo cider from concentrate though. I don't think the cloudy apple juice would work out the best with this.

redser7

Sounds good although I'm not sure about waiting for the yeast to be dead before adding the fruit. I guess it would push the % up if it is still active - sorry dont know about cider, just relating what I've been reading on wine. Here's a post from this morning on it ...

"You can do either (add early or late) depending on what style of wine you are after. At the start of ferment will extract more tannins and much of the aroma compounds will be blown out through the airlock. Adding smaller quantities later alows alcohol extraction of tanins in the fruit and the less vigorous ferment means aroma compounds are retained in the wine.

Bill smiths book has opened up a whole new chapter wine wine making for me... Id recommend the book to anyone."

I just bought that book

Here's the thread. Again it is wine related but I think it has good background info that might be useful ...
http://www.homewinemaking.co.uk/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1352416923/14#14

I got the tip about not squeezing too hard from another thread.

Khannie

The yeast is still alive and well in a cider at that point. It's how you get carbonation when you prime - the yeast starts up again when you add the priming sugar, produces carbon dioxide which has nowhere to go but into the cider = fizzy cider.

redser7

ahhh! Should work out nicely then I think

chris2286

IM STARTING TO DRIBBLE HERE THINKING ABOUT IT HA HA

Khannie

Right....update -

I came across a bottle of apple and raspberry in the attic that must have been there a few months (it's months since I did a batch of the apple and raspberry). Let me just say that it was absolutely savage. So the first message is that this stuff ages well. I'm not very patient however.

The really good news is that I got impatient and tried out the apple + raspberry syrup (the stuff that I got in a supermarket in France) last night and it was really, really good. Surprisingly good given it's only been in the bottle a short time. So it looks like adding the raspberry after it's fully fermented out in primary is the way to go.

chris2286

well im gonna give it ago today but im goin to try a small 2 litre first and see what happens

chris2286

ok lads what iv done and not done so far. iv went for the simple cider recipe so.

2 empty 2litre bottles

2 litres of 2 different apple juices (thats 4litres in total)

1 teaspoon of Youngs Dried Active Wine and Beer Yeast


(skip to next paragraph if you dont want to read instructions)
very simple as i said fill your 2 X 2 litre bottles with the 2 different apple juices once both are full drink about half a glass out of each of them and leave it sit to room temp (unless you pick them off the shelf and werent in the fridge) add a half teaspoon to each of the ciders and do not shake. tighten the cork fully then loosen quarter way so gas can escape leave sit in the warmest place in your house mine are in the living room as we have the fire lighting this way it gets a lovely fizz and ferments rapidly.

not done yet is adding the fruit. iv picked up the frozen mixed fruit pack from tesco raspberries blackcurrants and cherrys are in it so when im ready to add them ill have to separate the cherrys from what i need to continue.

maybe this isnt the best way but i said id try a maybe shorter term solution. i hope you guys are gettin somewhere with whatever method you go with ill be back in a few days

sharingan

Khannie wrote: »

edit: Did some googling. Another option that might work well is to ferment out the apple cider, then liquidise the berries and strain them through a cheesecloth into the fermented cider. This could even be your priming, depending on the sugar content of the berries.

I like your priming idea, fermentation can expel volatile components during primary, and I think that is what is happening.

But priming with your final flavour component, then trapping it all in the bottle ... now thats rock and roll.

You will also trap aroma ... but mind your ratios. Dont make bottle bombs, but I think you could easily get away with 2 level teaspoons of raspberry syrup per 500ml bottle, if they are proper tough bottles.

redser7

chris2286 wrote: »

ok lads what iv done and not done so far. iv went for the simple cider recipe so.

2 empty 2litre bottles

2 litres of 2 different apple juices (thats 4litres in total)

1 teaspoon of Youngs Dried Active Wine and Beer Yeast


(skip to next paragraph if you dont want to read instructions)
very simple as i said fill your 2 X 2 litre bottles with the 2 different apple juices once both are full drink about half a glass out of each of them and leave it sit to room temp (unless you pick them off the shelf and werent in the fridge) add a half teaspoon to each of the ciders and do not shake. tighten the cork fully then loosen quarter way so gas can escape leave sit in the warmest place in your house mine are in the living room as we have the fire lighting this way it gets a lovely fizz and ferments rapidly.

not done yet is adding the fruit. iv picked up the frozen mixed fruit pack from tesco raspberries blackcurrants and cherrys are in it so when im ready to add them ill have to separate the cherrys from what i need to continue.

maybe this isnt the best way but i said id try a maybe shorter term solution. i hope you guys are gettin somewhere with whatever method you go with ill be back in a few days

Thanks. How much are the frozen mixed berries and what weight do you get?. cheers

Khannie

sharingan wrote: »

I like your priming idea, fermentation can expel volatile components during primary, and I think that is what is happening.

But priming with your final flavour component, then trapping it all in the bottle ... now thats rock and roll.

I lol'd. I should be making some more over the coming weeks and think I will prime with the berry juice alright.

sharingan wrote: »

You will also trap aroma ... but mind your ratios. Dont make bottle bombs, but I think you could easily get away with 2 level teaspoons of raspberry syrup per 500ml bottle, if they are proper tough bottles.

I did 10-13g in the 4 bottles that I made recently (it was a bit slapdash - I just had the bottle on a scales, then poured in some syrup). The syrup is about 70% sugar. I drank both of the glass bottles. They worked out very tasty. You could really taste the raspberry, but the fizz left very quickly. I have 2 more in plastic bottles.

chris2286

redser7 wrote: »

Thanks. How much are the frozen mixed berries and what weight do you get?. cheers

http://www.tesco.ie/groceries/product/browse/default.aspx?N=4294953163&Ne=4294954028

bought 2x the country mixed fruits 500 gram i got for 2 euro each only cause thay didnt have any other blackcurrants in the store

redser7

Thanks a lot Chris

chris2286

redser7 wrote: »

Thanks a lot Chris

no bother

chris2286

ok lads just wanted to know and give the heads up on things so far.

well i failed miserably with my last project the apple was too strong and just didnt combine well with the blackcurrants and raspberries so the simple cider recipe is out of the question.

the next recipe im trying is a type of hard apple cider.

10 litres of lidl apple juice 99cent each
water
2kg sugar
young wine and bakers yeast (only cause i didnt have enough of the youngs yeast)

fermenter
hydrometer
big spoon
airlock and bung

in the fermenter poor in 5 litres of the juice and boil 1.7 litres of water in the kettle added all the sugar then the water it helped desolve quicker add the rest of the juice and top up the rest with cold water to the 24 litre mark and got a reading of 0.052 i added the yeast a level teaspoon per gallon so roughly 6 level teaspoons and now its sitting in my living room fermenting mad.

would love to know what route ye guys went and how ye are doin

redser7

Havn't tried cider yet, but reading that you could save yourself a good bit on the yeast by making up a starter a couple of days before you plan to do your batch. Maybe you know about it already? Half pint of the juice at approx 20 degrees in a bottle, teaspoon of sugar and a little nutrient if you have it. Add 1 tsp of yeast. Give it a good shake and place it somewhere warm. Give it 2 days to build a nice colony and then chuck it in. It will be acclimatised to your jucie and have a nice multiplying colony already and should take off nice and fast for you. You can even hold a bit of the starter back and feed it some more juice and sugar for another batch and start building a new colony. Free yeast
Another thing you can do to help the yeast is invert the sugar, maybe you know already about that too? Bring it to boiling point in some water with a tsp of citric acid and then simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring. Makes for a smoother ferment as the yeast doesnt have to split it to consume it. Helps prevent possible off-tastes too.

Khannie

chris2286 wrote: »

would love to know what route ye guys went and how ye are doin

I'm doing up a "cloudy apple juice cider". 1.29 per litre in lidl. This is a favourite of mine anyway. Recipe I used is:

23L of cloudy apple juice in bucket
Some boiled raisins and strong tea
bit of yeast on top

That's been in the bucket about 10 days now so I'll check it tonight to see if it's finished. If it is I'll do the thaw of the berries and use them to prime the cider. I plan to do 10L of apple and berry and use the rest for just plain apple.

My basic plan is:

Squeeze out the berry juice. Probably quite a bit. Measure the gravity to make sure it's enough sugar for a decent amount of fizz then just bottle. That's the plan anyway.

chris2286

redser7 wrote: »

Havn't tried cider yet, but reading that you could save yourself a good bit on the yeast by making up a starter a couple of days before you plan to do your batch. Maybe you know about it already? Half pint of the juice at approx 20 degrees in a bottle, teaspoon of sugar and a little nutrient if you have it. Add 1 tsp of yeast. Give it a good shake and place it somewhere warm. Give it 2 days to build a nice colony and then chuck it in. It will be acclimatised to your jucie and have a nice multiplying colony already and should take off nice and fast for you. You can even hold a bit of the starter back and feed it some more juice and sugar for another batch and start building a new colony. Free yeast
Another thing you can do to help the yeast is invert the sugar, maybe you know already about that too? Bring it to boiling point in some water with a tsp of citric acid and then simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring. Makes for a smoother ferment as the yeast doesnt have to split it to consume it. Helps prevent possible off-tastes too.

i appreciate the different ways to activate the yeast but it starts really quick when i have near the fire place roughly roughly 3-4 hours

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

I'm doing up a "cloudy apple juice cider". 1.29 per litre in lidl. This is a favourite of mine anyway. Recipe I used is:

23L of cloudy apple juice in bucket
Some boiled raisins and strong tea
bit of yeast on top

That's been in the bucket about 10 days now so I'll check it tonight to see if it's finished. If it is I'll do the thaw of the berries and use them to prime the cider. I plan to do 10L of apple and berry and use the rest for just plain apple.

My basic plan is:

Squeeze out the berry juice. Probably quite a bit. Measure the gravity to make sure it's enough sugar for a decent amount of fizz then just bottle. That's the plan anyway.

nice one and how long are you goin to leave it bottled for?
it doesnt really matter when to add tanning does it?

im surprised you didnt add any water and sugar to it as i find the cider stays a bit too appley from the juice alone but you said its your fav way so hope all goes good and thanks for sharing

redser7

chris2286 wrote: »

i appreciate the different ways to activate the yeast but it starts really quick when i have near the fire place roughly roughly 3-4 hours

Cool. Just a tip to save on the yeast. In fact in wine recipies, whether it's one gallon or 5, 1 tsp is a constant as the culture just multiplies till either the sugar is gone or the alcohol gets so high it kills it

Khannie

chris2286 wrote: »

nice one and how long are you goin to leave it bottled for?

I try to leave it as long as I can, but the minimum would be 2 weeks before I'd consider it drinkable. When I started out I was trying a bottle basically every day and I could actually taste it getting better by the day at the time.

chris2286 wrote: »

it doesnt really matter when to add tanning does it?

Pretty sure you can add it any time.

chris2286 wrote: »

im surprised you didnt add any water and sugar to it as i find the cider stays a bit too appley from the juice alone but you said its your fav way so hope all goes good and thanks for sharing

Yeah, I like the appleyness of it but I add a reasonable amount of sweetener to it. The raisins do add quite a bit of sugar to it. I reckon it finishes up around the 6.5 - 7% mark.

chris2286

good to hear everything is goin well hopefully soon we'll have some samples tested and reviewed looking forward to it

Khannie

So slight change here.....I thought I'd be able to get some cheap kits from that lad on adverts but he's stopped replying to PM's so I'm going to keep the apple I have for just drinking. I have a 2nd kit which I got from him, a pear cider, and I'm going to use that with the berries and see how I get on. It's not ideal, but greedy friends are destroying my apple cider store and I don't want to run out over Christmas.

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

So slight change here.....I thought I'd be able to get some cheap kits from that lad on adverts but he's stopped replying to PM's so I'm going to keep the apple I have for just drinking. I have a 2nd kit which I got from him, a pear cider, and I'm going to use that with the berries and see how I get on. It's not ideal, but greedy friends are destroying my apple cider store and I don't want to run out over Christmas.

ha ha i understand what ya mean i have that prob every weekend but this weekend i have no ready made brew so some will be disappointed and the stuff i have brewing will be ready next week for the testing with the berries

Khannie

Well I gave this a whirl tonight. Bit of a pain. I'll give details when I'm not on the phone. its bottled anyway.

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

Well I gave this a whirl tonight. Bit of a pain. I'll give details when I'm not on the phone. its bottled anyway.

well mate hope all is good and look at what i found http://www.homebrewwest.ie/on-the-rocks-cider-mixed-berry-limited-edition-2711-p.asp and for 20 quid it be worth a go i say

Khannie

Nice one. I might give that a spin alright. Thanks for the pointer.

So here's what I did: I got about 10L of pear cider (from kit) and added half a kilo of mixed berries (fruits of the forest from lidl) and about 300g of blueberries and 80g of raspberry syrup. Getting the juice out of the berries was fairly hassle-ish. I used a gold coffee filter like this one:



and mushed them with a spoon to get the juice out (I had defrosted them first). That was a fairly slow process and didn't result in much juice tbh.

Anyway, in the end I got it bottled and primed. It tasted fairly thin but I'm holding out hopes. I reckon you need about 1.5KG of berries per 10L, give or take.

I'm going to kick off an apple batch this weekend and prime it with raspberry juice when the time comes. I'm going to just blend a heap of them with some of the cider and pass it through the same filter to remove the seeds etc. Yes it'll introduce some oxygen (bad) but the raspberries are full of anti-oxidants (good) so hopefully it'll just even things out.

Sure it's practically one of your five a day. :pac:

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

Nice one. I might give that a spin alright. Thanks for the pointer.

So here's what I did: I got about 10L of pear cider (from kit) and added half a kilo of mixed berries (fruits of the forest from lidl) and about 300g of blueberries and 80g of raspberry syrup. Getting the juice out of the berries was fairly hassle-ish. I used a gold coffee filter like this one:



and mushed them with a spoon to get the juice out (I had defrosted them first). That was a fairly slow process and didn't result in much juice tbh.

Anyway, in the end I got it bottled and primed. It tasted fairly thin but I'm holding out hopes. I reckon you need about 1.5KG of berries per 10L, give or take.

I'm going to kick off an apple batch this weekend and prime it with raspberry juice when the time comes. I'm going to just blend a heap of them with some of the cider and pass it through the same filter to remove the seeds etc. Yes it'll introduce some oxygen (bad) but the raspberries are full of anti-oxidants (good) so hopefully it'll just even things out.

Sure it's practically one of your five a day. :pac:

i had the same problem today with the berries but i only used 1 pack of mixed berries from tesco used my blender then added it to a pot with a cup of water brought to a boil dont ask why i just thought it be a good idea to have a watery syrup well i added them straight to half of my cider that i mentioned before and tasted it straight away and man apart from it bein lumpy from the berries i thought it was quite nice and it was very close to what i was looking for i must that coffee filter should do the trick thanks for that.

over all my second attempt only took 3 weeks so im prity happy with the out come well i hope they put this thread as a sticky cause theres loads of very useful info here and great ingredients

Khannie

chris2286 wrote: »

from it bein lumpy from the berries i thought it was quite nice and it was very close to what i was looking for

That's all you want then really. Mine wasn't that great, but I have high hopes for the apple and raspberry one. Don't forget though, if it was the right sweetness now, it'll be very dry when it's finished fermenting out. You'll need to add some sweetener to it to get it back to tasting nice.

redser7

I don't know if this will help with cider making but for wine making with fruit you would also ferment on the pulp. So freeze/defrost/add pectolaise (helps with juice extraction), and ferment away on top of this. Then strain the pulp out after a few days and continue to ferment out to dryness
The other thing you can do which is cleaner, is put the fruit pulp in a square of muslin cloth and make a giant tea bag out of it. Leave a thread/string out the edge of the bucket. The just pull the lot out and squeeze when you think the cider is fruity enough.

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

That's all you want then really. Mine wasn't that great, but I have high hopes for the apple and raspberry one. Don't forget though, if it was the right sweetness now, it'll be very dry when it's finished fermenting out. You'll need to add some sweetener to it to get it back to tasting nice.

i stopped the fermentation at just over 5.1/2 % and just added the berrie juice syrup and have it in litre bottles the more i taste it its like strawberry bulmers without the fizz but thats easily sorted i would recommend removing the strawberries if ya want that real berry flav the strawberries make it a bit too sweet

chris2286

redser7 wrote: »

I don't know if this will help with cider making but for wine making with fruit you would also ferment on the pulp. So freeze/defrost/add pectolaise (helps with juice extraction), and ferment away on top of this. Then strain the pulp out after a few days and continue to ferment out to dryness
The other thing you can do which is cleaner, is put the fruit pulp in a square of muslin cloth and make a giant tea bag out of it. Leave a thread/string out the edge of the bucket. The just pull the lot out and squeeze when you think the cider is fruity enough.

i heard of this method before and its very helpful thanks

Khannie

Well....bad news.

I kinda forgot about this as the reason not to prime with the berries. I'd seen it before when adding them into primary. There's a heap of gick (official term ) in the bottles as you can see from this pic.



I'd say you're gonna see the same Chris. When I got it before with the apple and raspberry in the bucket, I just got rid of it when I was batch priming. Not sure what this is going to be like now. I might pass it through a filter like the coffee filter or a sieve on its way into the glass. If I'm really lucky (and I doubt this because the stuff in the bucket before was quite "floatey") it'll fall to the bottom.

Khannie

chris2286 wrote: »

i stopped the fermentation at just over 5.1/2 %

How did you do that?

chris2286 wrote: »

and just added the berrie juice syrup and have it in litre bottles the more i taste it its like strawberry bulmers without the fizz but thats easily sorted i would recommend removing the strawberries if ya want that real berry flav the strawberries make it a bit too sweet

I actually had a bag of frozen strawberries in the freezer but decided against using them. So do you not use any sweetener in yours? How do you prevent it from continuing to ferment in the bottle (losing all the sweetness) and not turn into bottle bombs?

redser7

You could strain it through a piece of muslin cloth. Hickeys on Henry street sell it for 3 euro per meter, and it's a meter wide. I use it for making the giant tea bag during primary.

I'm picking one of these up ...
http://www.homebrewwest.ie/better-brew-beer-and-wine-strainer-1321-p.asp

and maybe one of these (much cheaper) - see the funnels with strainers towards the bottom of the page ...
http://www.homebrewwest.ie/stirrers-funnels-jugs-196-c.asp

redser7

Would you not stop ferment in cider making with CT and sorbate like in wine making? Tesco have both.

Khannie

You'd be fizz-less then though. Flat cider? Not for me.

Thanks for that link. It's given me an idea. I could probably get the same with the coffee filter thing and a funnel (both of which I have).

redser7

ah right No worries

chris2286

Khannie wrote: »

How did you do that?

I actually had a bag of frozen strawberries in the freezer but decided against using them. So do you not use any sweetener in yours? How do you prevent it from continuing to ferment in the bottle (losing all the sweetness) and not turn into bottle bombs?

with wine fermenting stopper you can still get a bit of fizz if you add a bit of apple juice or sugar but it be too sweet cause the berries made it very sweet already then bottle in plastic flagons put near a fire for about 4 hours feel the bottle and if rock hard then put straight into fridge and that stops the bottles from exploding but be careful when opening i found nothing wrong after i poured it through a siv into my pint and even tho you can still see tiny bits floating about you actually cant feel em when drinking so i think a job well done