I have my first turbo cider, and ginger beer on the go at the moment. The TC was 4 L juice plus a couple of blended bramleys, plus strong tea. Pitching with Young's cider yeast was 3 days ago and I have a great big head that looks like it's got a lot of apply bits in it. The ginger beer was with grated ginger in 4 L water with 300g sugar, pitched at the same time and has a head about 1cm thick.
My intention was to rack the cider to a secondary when things had settled out, top up with an extra litre and continue the ferment. For the ginger beer I was hoping the head would subside so I can top that up to 5 L with water.
My previous experience is only with kit ale and S-04 yeast, and the head on those has dropped reasonably quickly. What can I expect with this cider yeast? I'm concerned that I won't be able to top the ginger beer up if it doesn't fall. I'd rather not rack the ginger beer to a secondary as I want to keep the ginger in for the whole of the fermentation (or is this not really necessary?)
Similarly for the cider, would I expect that head+apply bits to fall? It's probably 8cm or so thick!
Also, when I top up am I likely to get a head developing again?
In both cases I'd prefer to be taking hydro readings direct in the FV (5 L water bottles) as I don't have a way of easily extracting brew and replacing it. I'm not going to be able to take readings if the heads stay huge!
Finally, my intention when racking is to syphon. I have seen people mention filtering - I presume that's through muslin? And how careful should you be about aeration, either during a fermentation, or just prior to bottling?
Finally finally, I haven't quite decided what to do about sweetening yet. I don't want them over sweet (I prefer cider medium-dry), but it'd be nice to see if I can get things about right so sweetening at drinking time isn't required. I'd rather under sweeten than over and I intend to batch primer prior to bottling, so how does 1 tablespoon Splenda + sugar (10g for cider*, 15g for ginger beer*)
Cheers!
* I'd prefer lower carbonation for the cider, and I don't want to risk ginger beer bottle bombs. If I am 100% sure that fermentation has finished I'll up the ginger beer sugar to 25g. All figures are assuming 5 L total)
My intention was to rack the cider to a secondary when things had settled out, top up with an extra litre and continue the ferment. For the ginger beer I was hoping the head would subside so I can top that up to 5 L with water.
My previous experience is only with kit ale and S-04 yeast, and the head on those has dropped reasonably quickly. What can I expect with this cider yeast? I'm concerned that I won't be able to top the ginger beer up if it doesn't fall. I'd rather not rack the ginger beer to a secondary as I want to keep the ginger in for the whole of the fermentation (or is this not really necessary?)
Similarly for the cider, would I expect that head+apply bits to fall? It's probably 8cm or so thick!
Also, when I top up am I likely to get a head developing again?
In both cases I'd prefer to be taking hydro readings direct in the FV (5 L water bottles) as I don't have a way of easily extracting brew and replacing it. I'm not going to be able to take readings if the heads stay huge!
Finally, my intention when racking is to syphon. I have seen people mention filtering - I presume that's through muslin? And how careful should you be about aeration, either during a fermentation, or just prior to bottling?
Finally finally, I haven't quite decided what to do about sweetening yet. I don't want them over sweet (I prefer cider medium-dry), but it'd be nice to see if I can get things about right so sweetening at drinking time isn't required. I'd rather under sweeten than over and I intend to batch primer prior to bottling, so how does 1 tablespoon Splenda + sugar (10g for cider*, 15g for ginger beer*)
Cheers!
* I'd prefer lower carbonation for the cider, and I don't want to risk ginger beer bottle bombs. If I am 100% sure that fermentation has finished I'll up the ginger beer sugar to 25g. All figures are assuming 5 L total)
