The story so far!
Pressed apples from the tree in my garden on 1st Nov and got 20l of juice. As I added some campden tablets I didn't add yeast until the 2nd.
On the 16th, worried about leaving it in the buckets, I racked to four demijohns.
They've continued to ferment, some are still more active than others, for example when I checked the other day one was showing 1.006 on the hydrometer whereas another was down to 1.002 with bubbling slowing right down.
As I have 20l, my current thought process is to bottle one demijohn soon - I completely get that the longer I leave it the better, but to me it's part of the learning process to see how the flavour changes over time. I'd aim to bottle the others over the coming months, and if I can get a head start next year build up some stocks (usually I'm giving away apples or letting our chickens have the fallers through the year, next year I'm hoping to do several smaller batches and let them sit in the demijohns for longer)
For the others that I want to leave for a bit longer, they have a bit of lees building up, would people recommend racking to another demijohn for storage to get them off this? (I'm assuming they will be on there for a couple of months tops) And if I do, would you top up with something? Currently on each demijohn the cider is up to the neck of the bottle, I wasn't sure if it would be best to top up to the stopper, or if this is overkill.
I know some people recommend marbles for topping up but I don't have any to hand!
Pressed apples from the tree in my garden on 1st Nov and got 20l of juice. As I added some campden tablets I didn't add yeast until the 2nd.
On the 16th, worried about leaving it in the buckets, I racked to four demijohns.
They've continued to ferment, some are still more active than others, for example when I checked the other day one was showing 1.006 on the hydrometer whereas another was down to 1.002 with bubbling slowing right down.
As I have 20l, my current thought process is to bottle one demijohn soon - I completely get that the longer I leave it the better, but to me it's part of the learning process to see how the flavour changes over time. I'd aim to bottle the others over the coming months, and if I can get a head start next year build up some stocks (usually I'm giving away apples or letting our chickens have the fallers through the year, next year I'm hoping to do several smaller batches and let them sit in the demijohns for longer)
For the others that I want to leave for a bit longer, they have a bit of lees building up, would people recommend racking to another demijohn for storage to get them off this? (I'm assuming they will be on there for a couple of months tops) And if I do, would you top up with something? Currently on each demijohn the cider is up to the neck of the bottle, I wasn't sure if it would be best to top up to the stopper, or if this is overkill.
I know some people recommend marbles for topping up but I don't have any to hand!