Spoon's stupidly simple (and very cheap) cider:

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Spoon

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Did this as I brew a fair amount of ale but the OH only drinks IPA's, so wanted some variety to keep her amused and give me time between IPA's to brew some darker beers.


Day 1:
4x 1l apple juice
Pectolase (can be omitted if you don't mind haze)
Yeast nutrient
Cider yeast
Demi john
airlock and bung
tinfoil

Sanitise demi john and airlock

Pour in 2l of juice, bit of sanitized tinfoil over the neck and hold hand over it, shake to oxygenate, repeat at 3l and 4l.

Put pectolase, nutrient, yeast, and a glug of apple juice in a sanitised bottle, shake to dissolve. (the reason for this becomes clear on day 14).

Ferment somewhere for a couple of weeks.

Day 14:

Put teabags (I used 3x redbush tea, gives a subtle fruity/flowery flavour to it) in a warmed cafetiere (or thermos mug, or anythig that'll let you agitate it and make some seriosuly strong/sweet tea) with the priming sugar (~40g) and 8-12 sweeter tablets (I tried 2 and whilst very sweet for non dry cider drinkers it starts to taste a bit like diet pepsi) and add boiling water. Dissolve/brew it for a few minutes, and pour into the cider. Give it a quick whirl with the sanitised syphon (try not to disturb too much yeast) and then bottle.

Then, pour the residual yeast/cider slurry into a bottle and cap it. This will be the yeast for next time.

Put the bottles aside for 1-2 weeks to condition and settle out.

Within the next 2-3 months (more likely weeks in our house):
Decant off the cider from the yeast bottle, taste to check for autolysis (sulphur) or other off flavours caused by infections.
If more than a few weeks have passed make a starter. Add half a bottle of apple juice to the bottle, 1/8th of a teaspoon of nutrient, shake to oxygenate and put some sanitised tinfoil on top as an 'airlock' to keep bacteria out but allow CO2 out and oxygen in (multiplying/growing/fermenting yeast needs some oxygen, it won't oxidize until after krausen and even then the krausen of CO2 bubbles keeps oxygen out of the cider), put somewhere warm to ferment quickly for 2-3 days, this allows the yeast to multiply and build up their energy reserves before going in the demi-john.

Then repeat day 1. Just pitch whole bottle of starter cider. This is where dissolving the nutrient and pectolase is done in the bottle)

You can keep using the same yeast until either:
1) it becomes infected
2) it stops attenuating, collecting the floculated yeast puts selective pressure on it to floculate early, eventually it'll evolve into a yeast that won't attenuate before it floculates.

Some say ditch it after ~6 brews, some ale breweries claim to have used the same yeast for 800 brews!

The cost of making batches (after the first purchase of the jar of pectolase, nutrient, sweetner etc) is only 50p/l of apple juice and pence of the nutrient/pectolase. I'll keep an eye on final gravities and see how far I can go with this yeast.
 
how did this turn out ?

Went down a treat. Good enough that it convinced my brother to go out and buy a demi john so he could get some brewing.

Made some raspberry and lemon cider next which didn't work out so well, (far too much lemon), but still drinkable.

Yeast died on the 3rd attempt, no idea why, made a starter and got nothing from it.
 
Put pectolase, nutrient, yeast, and a glug of apple juice in a sanitised bottle, shake to dissolve. (the reason for this becomes clear on day 14).

spot the stupid mistake, that should read:

Put pectolase, nutrient, yeast in the demi john

and a glug of apple juice and nutrient in a sanitised bottle (the reason for this becomes clear on day 14).and cap it
 

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