Dialing in Calvados

[aquavita]

For those of you not familiar with my saga, I have attempted 3 apple ferments (one is still fermenting) and not one has reached "dry" status. I let one sit for 3 months to try and get dry. Nope.

2x with the Kirkland brand Natural Apple Juice - Fresh pressed, pasteurized, not from concentrate. Ingredients: Apple juice. Figured I'd be good. Nope. Some suggested that there may not have been enough nutrients for the yeast. At first I thought it was temp - my ferment room is about 60 to 65 degrees in the winter. So I bought a mini heater and can reliably keep the room at 70 - 75 now. Nope - never went dry. Said screw it and ran it. Produced 1 gallon of 60% apple brandy per 12 gallons of juice. The nutrition site claims that the juice has 27g sugar per 240 ml. That equals a potential of an SG of 1.043 - a wash potential of 6.6%. Parent site claims I will get 1.14 gallons - so I was not too far off.

Current source of 12 gallon batch is Musselman's. SG is 1.042 - so pretty similar. However, to aid with nutrents, I added 1 pack of Motts All Natural Applesauce to the 12 gallons of Apple Cider. Should be interesting to see if I get any improvement.

This current batch, tested pH last week and saw that the ferment was a bit above 2.5pH... way too low for EC-1118. SG was 1.02 (down from 1.045) Curious as to what would cause that. Adjusted the pH and she started to ferment again. Tested SG and it is now 1.014. Still not dry and all activity seems to have stopped. Will let it sit a bit.

Next batch/experiment I am going to boil down a few multi-vitamins to go with the lot.

Anyway, that's the update to the saga. Having fun anyway.