biggles22
New Member
Hi all,
I've enjoyed reading this forum for the past few weeks, it has been very insightful! I'll tell you a bit about me first. I'm an 18 year old student, soon to be off to university. For a few years i've dreamt of making my own cider as one of my neighbours has a large apple orchard and every autumn i'm on the receiving end of hundreds of apples, sure are tasty but i can't eat them quick enough before they're gone off and ready for the compost heap. My nan used to be a keen homebrewer herself, making everything from cider to sloe gin. Around 3 weeks ago i was looking at university funds, costs etc, and dreading how i would pay for it all, when my nan suggested making my own alcohol, it caught my interest and she donated some of her old brewing equipment to help me out. I began with a lot of research online, recipes, techniques, equipment, enzymes, yeasts etc. I've never done things by half, if i was going to make my own drinks then they had to be nice, and not make me blind, or atleast until the nights over :party:
After the research i went out and brought a nice big 6 gallon FV, some airlocks, youngs cider yeast, sterilising powder, pectolase etc etc, practically everything i needed, and began an easy first batch of Turbo Cider. A few days into fermentation i started reading more and more into different recipes and got a bit impatient, so began a small 2 gallon batch of Cheeky Vimto. And then just yesterday i brought 2 5 litre water bottles and began a gallon Fiery Ginger Beer and a gallon of Alcoholic Lemonade. I might aswell test all different brews to see whats easy, and which i like the most so i'm ready for when i get to uni!
I bottled the Turbo Cider on Monday, I used 2 litre PET bottles. I decided to do a bit of experimenting with dryness and what sugar to use to carbonate. I had 4 bottles of each dry, medium and sweet, using Morrisons sweetener to back sweeten. And to carbonate each bottle i varied the sugar used, so i've used castor, brown, golden syrup and honey. So i should end up with 12 different types of cider. I'm hoping to find out which carbonates the best and gives the best flavour. The Cheeky Vimto will be getting bottled on Monday, from a cheeky taste whilst checking the S.G a few days ago it is delicious! The Ginger Beer is blooping away nicely, about 1 bloop a second! The Lemonade is a fair bit slower, about 1 bloop every 30 seconds, but i put that down to the acidity, hopefully it'll speed up a bit.
My future plans are to try Wurzel's Orange Wine as soon as the ginger beer has finished, which at its current rate should be next week
A quick question about that, has anybody tried a sparkling wurzel?
I've got all my recipes written down and recorded. I also priced each drink up, ginger beer turns out the cheapest, at around 45p a litre! :drink:
I'd like to thank everybody for contributing so much to this forum, it has been a goldmine of help! :clap:
Dan
I've enjoyed reading this forum for the past few weeks, it has been very insightful! I'll tell you a bit about me first. I'm an 18 year old student, soon to be off to university. For a few years i've dreamt of making my own cider as one of my neighbours has a large apple orchard and every autumn i'm on the receiving end of hundreds of apples, sure are tasty but i can't eat them quick enough before they're gone off and ready for the compost heap. My nan used to be a keen homebrewer herself, making everything from cider to sloe gin. Around 3 weeks ago i was looking at university funds, costs etc, and dreading how i would pay for it all, when my nan suggested making my own alcohol, it caught my interest and she donated some of her old brewing equipment to help me out. I began with a lot of research online, recipes, techniques, equipment, enzymes, yeasts etc. I've never done things by half, if i was going to make my own drinks then they had to be nice, and not make me blind, or atleast until the nights over :party:
After the research i went out and brought a nice big 6 gallon FV, some airlocks, youngs cider yeast, sterilising powder, pectolase etc etc, practically everything i needed, and began an easy first batch of Turbo Cider. A few days into fermentation i started reading more and more into different recipes and got a bit impatient, so began a small 2 gallon batch of Cheeky Vimto. And then just yesterday i brought 2 5 litre water bottles and began a gallon Fiery Ginger Beer and a gallon of Alcoholic Lemonade. I might aswell test all different brews to see whats easy, and which i like the most so i'm ready for when i get to uni!
I bottled the Turbo Cider on Monday, I used 2 litre PET bottles. I decided to do a bit of experimenting with dryness and what sugar to use to carbonate. I had 4 bottles of each dry, medium and sweet, using Morrisons sweetener to back sweeten. And to carbonate each bottle i varied the sugar used, so i've used castor, brown, golden syrup and honey. So i should end up with 12 different types of cider. I'm hoping to find out which carbonates the best and gives the best flavour. The Cheeky Vimto will be getting bottled on Monday, from a cheeky taste whilst checking the S.G a few days ago it is delicious! The Ginger Beer is blooping away nicely, about 1 bloop a second! The Lemonade is a fair bit slower, about 1 bloop every 30 seconds, but i put that down to the acidity, hopefully it'll speed up a bit.
My future plans are to try Wurzel's Orange Wine as soon as the ginger beer has finished, which at its current rate should be next week
A quick question about that, has anybody tried a sparkling wurzel? I've got all my recipes written down and recorded. I also priced each drink up, ginger beer turns out the cheapest, at around 45p a litre! :drink:
I'd like to thank everybody for contributing so much to this forum, it has been a goldmine of help! :clap:
Dan
