/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Professional cider maker in the hizz-ouse. I work in the business on the science and process side of things.

Some of you might remember me as I have contributed to these threads before.

When I talk about alcohol, I mean cider. Some of the things I say may be wrong for beer or similar, but cider is a much simpler and easier drink to make.

Sanitation is NOT key. It is preferable, but apples have a large quantity of wild yeasts and other microbes growing on the skin anyway. As soon as you pulp the apples for pressing, you're introducing microbes to the liquid. Sterilisation is relatively trivial. A more important thing is the state of the apples. Apples which are bruised are disastrous, as they have large concentrations of the anaerobic, acetic-acid causing bacteria.

I've done a pick/press of my own juice and when the pictures are uploaded I'll go through the process we've used. For now, take a gander at my previous batch. I added fruit to these two - strawberries and blackberries. They had a gentle fizz as we added a touch of sugar before bottling. If it's your first time, or you're not 100% sure of what will happen, do not do this. You will end upo with exploding bottles.

>not using real, self-pressed apples to make fantastic scrumpy

>not working in a cider factory's lab as a supervisor and understanding fermentation like a boss

>not getting paid to drink mass produced cider in work

>not being able to steal all the equipment, yeast, fermaid, diammonium phosphate, sodium metabisulphite, peracetic acid and sterile water you need to make top quality homemade cider and selling it to local bespoke bars at £2.50 per bottle

>being a regular 4channer

Pic related, there's air in the top to add a small measure of oxidisation, and allow the production of traces of acetic acid. These two were blackberry and strawberry with cider, and didn't get sold, because they were fucking lush. Used honey to sweeten after fermentation to dryness, NaMBS to slow fermentation to low levels while still allowing for secondary fermentation in bottle, producing a delightful carbonation.

Making more this autumn, but I hate using apple conc or bought juice.