i am a total newbe on this forum.
i lurked for years and read alot of posts off and on but never got around to joining.
now that i've joined i've been reading a great deal about apple processing.
interesting reading but some of it puzzles me and i'd like to ask some questions but worry i'll offend by accident.
i don't want to offend by asking questions without putting up my own post on my experiences first .
all comments are welcome as i'm looking to expand my knowledge as much as possible.
my goal is to go further with an apple wine i already make and still out some nice brandy to shelve for a year or two.
time to get windy
my experience,
way back when i was still in school i got a job at a cider mill.
we made hundreds of gallons of cider ever day and went through 4'x'4'x4' wooden apple storage boxes by the hour.
the boxes were loaded into the hopper with a forklift and the apples made their way to the grinder on a chain and wood slat conveyor belt .
that ignited an interest in cider that in forty years has never left me.
back then i made hard cider by simply setting the sweet cider in the sun and venting it daily.
typically we drank it while it was still fizzy now i know the wild yeast was still working.
i attempted to make apple jack many times but setting the cider in the freezer but that never seems to work like i thought it would.
after college i quit messing with hard cider except occasionally the mill shut down ect ect.
i did look into making wine but it wasn't too long since it had become legal to make your own.
back then wine kits were crude info was hard to find, fresh wine grapes weren't easy to get ect ect ect.
plus this thing called the internet just didn't exist.
many years later i was found to be fatally ill and nearly died.
while i sat in the hospital i had time to think of things i'd been meaning to do and was facing the real possibility it would never happen.
i survived just barely and while recovering had alot of time to wander in the fairly new internet thingy.
one thing i was determined to do was make wine.
i read alot bought books and tried my hand at fermenting a few carboys.
in a way i was lucky part of my recovery required that i couldn't drink ANY ALCOHOL while i was still on kemo.
that keep the young wine safe for almost 15 months.
having tons of spare time i was also able to properly rack and oak.
long story but it ends with me getting really good at grape wine.
i've made the federal limit years in a row and it never lasted long as my friends got friendlier when they heard the bottling was done!!
the only thing i kinda avoided on formal technic was adding the sulfur to the wine as it gives me massive headaches in commercial red wines.
i decided to branch into fruit wines and naturally apple was top.
i made some hard cider with real wine yeast it came out good but not great.
i lost the appleness of the sweet cider.
back to the books research you know the drill.
i went with making apple wine instead of hard cider.
i revamped what the "experts" wanted me to add since it was chemical dependent.
in place of their additives i added things like raisons for the tannins , lemon juice for the acid then later malic acid.
to make it dry i needed a higher brix to hit a specific gravity of 1.080.
this produced a fairly stiff 17-19% alky content which made for a dry wine.
it's also very applely.
been making the apple wine for years now and when i bottle it it doesn't last long.
typically i was bottling 50-100 gallons a year.
i experimented with grinding my own and still do with the crab apples needed to get a good balance .
with the sweet cider i lucked into a source willing to fill my fermenting barrels for 3 per gallon and often his "math" for the bill is in my favor.
i do give him a few gallons as i consider him a friend.
lately i read up on apple jack and figured out a way to freeze distill through this and other sites.
i had apple wine that was past being great and wanted to experiment.
i didn't do it to consume as the sections can't be separated and i just hate hang overs and potential blindness.
the results were definitely stronger maybe 40% carried an excellent apple nose and retained the sourness this particular batch had designed into it.
i put it in some bottles with paper towel wadded is for an air lock bug blocker to let the worst of the volitables gas off over time.
that was a year maybe two ago i kinda forgot about the experiment and recently found it again.
the result so far is the apple nose is now intense.
the bad smells seem gone but i still ain't going to drink it.
it is extremely sour like the wine was in fact everything seems just stronger in the experiment.
also is totally clear and has been stored in plain glass no oaking.
anyway that's all i've got for now i'll post what i'm thinking i may do with this stuff later to continue on the experiment.
in the future i'll be running off some apple wine i made and never bottled it's been clear and is still on the lees for about 1.5 years.
it has never been sulfided , is in glass carboys and is protected with airlock's.
i haven't sampled it in a while but the first couple of gallons were excellent.
theres a fair bit to convert so some more freeze experiments may be included.
that's enough windy from me for now.
D
