YET ANOTHER HELLO FROM THE UK

[cidermaker]

Hello
I guess my username says what I do. I've recently built a paint pot still and I ran 50l of home-made hard cider thru it at the weekend. Used the guide on cuts and fraction, absolutely invaluable. Give the man a medal. So far so good. I've ordered an alcometer (incidentally called a spiritmeter over here in Blighty) Hoping to do the blending tonight or tomorrow. I noticed something in one of the topics about re-using the backset. So I have saved mine but I cant seem to find the best way of re-fermenting it, i.e. should I dilute it with water and if so what ratio should I use and how much sugar should I use.
I normally use a good wine-making yeast for my cider and generally this works well. I'm sure you hear questions like this all the time but I really have looked on the forum and the parent site for the answer but no luck.
I'm new to all this forum business so please feel free to tell me what I'm doing wrong.

[ArkyJ]

First! Welcome to the Forum!

Now, take the dregges (lee's) that are on the bottom of your ferementer and leave them in original
ferementer with a little wash left on top to keep the yeast alive. Do your distilling. What's left
in your still after you extract your alcohol. Keep 1/3rd of it. Pour the rest wherever.

Add your sugar into the still and melt. when cool or below 90 degrees. Pour back into ferementer
and then fill to ferementation mark (most use 3/4 full) with water or in your case, new cider.
Yeast is still there to do it's thing and you should see action in a couple of hours and maybe up to
12 hours. Least wise this is what works for me.
ArkyJ

[cidermaker]

Thanks for the the info. Most helpful. I'll have to add yeast though as I had already racked off my cider over three months ago.
Any idea what amount of sugar I should use per liter or per gallon roughly.

[Bushman]

Welcome to the forum, it takes a little while to figure out the search and still it can be hard to find things. I usually go to the forum and read other threads but always allow 1/2 hour reading time on the site. As one of your fellow UK members would say it's all here you just got to find it!

[cidermaker]

I've worked out my sugar issue by looking at the parent site. I'd just like to say that I wouldn't have got this far without all the info I've gleaned from here and the parent site. Like you say it's all here somewhere.

[Kentucky shinner]

Hello Cidermaker, welcome the the wild wild world of home distilling..
KS

[Samohon]

Welcome cidermaker...

Glad you made it...

[myles]

Yes welcome to the group. I like cider too.
Myles

[sterlingchap]

It's deep in the undergrowth on this site somewhere: the easy way to search (for groups of words, not just a single word) is,
Copy this line into your goodgle search box:
homedistiller.org yeast start
Now bookmark the results page you are on (so that you retain "homedistiller.org yeast start" in the Google search box)

This method uses Google to look for the words which follow ".org" -> YEAST START in this case
So, whenever you want to search for one or more keywords on this site, just go to the bookmark and change the search words (the words AFTER ".org") in the Google search box.

OOh Aar ooh aar ay!
Happy membership,
Chap

[rad14701]

sterlingchap is referring to the Forum Google search at the top of all forum pages... It provides all of the advanced search capabilities that Google has to offer...

[sterlingchap]

sterlingchap is referring to the Forum Google search at the top of all forum pages... It provides all of the advanced search capabilities that Google has to offer...

Thanks rad14701, I'd tried both search boxes and got nowhere. Hadn't noticed the little text header there.
Might it be an idea for the site op to throw away the large, visible search boxes that don't work well, and replace them with a large link to the Google search that does work well? No Rule states that we can't make it easy for people to navigate their way around here.
Chap

[rad14701]

<off-topic>
I only need to revert to the Google search for a very small number of the searches I do in these forums... And trust me, I do a lot of searches during the course of a day as I am forever looking up information related to active topics as well as member posts, amongst other things... But perhaps I have learned how to work within the limitations of the built-in search and that is why I have such a high success rate... Then again, quite a few of my plain old Google searches point me right back to these forums too with pages high in ranking order...
</off-topic>

[cidermaker]

Thanks guys. I hadnt noticed the HD Google Search until you pointed out. Generally I find the normal search boxes pretty good, its just that there is so much info to look at. I never seem to have time to get thru it all.