This experiment was created by taking the last of Type 25c and splitting it in two; this Cherry variant and another Blueberry variant. The original gravity of 1.028 includes approximately 2.3% alcohol since half of this 5 litre batch is made up of cider, the other half is fruit juice and sugar.
Not bad, not great. There’s less of a synthetic taste about this than the two concoctions I brewed up purely from Tesco fruit juice (Summer Turbo and Farting Thrush) but that ‘fake’ palate is still there underneath our own cider, and not entirely welcome.
Right now I feel as though next time I’ll use half the amount of external flavouring as I used here, and I’ll try to make that external flavour something natural, wether it’s fresh cherries / berries or at least fresh-frozen. This stuff is drinkable, but not great.
A bottle of the sister brew, Blueberry Orgy, has been given to a friend along with a bottle of the Mangrove Jack’s Blueberry Cider on which it was based. Will be interesting to see what kind of comparison he makes.
#wisdom: don’t use too much flavouring, especially from artificial sources. 2 litres of juice mixed with 2.5 litres of cider was overkill, and one litre would have been enough.
Absolutely no change here since I checked two days ago, let’s get this bottled. Total yield is 7 x 500 ml flip-tops, each with one Cooper’s carbonation drop and one Easybrew carbonation drop (total target = 600 ml) as well as 5 ml Erythritol. There was a good amount of fizz as the sweetener was added but things soon settled down a few seconds later.
Like the Blueberry variant also bottled today there’s a bit of a synthetic aftertaste that may calm down with conditioning and when that Erythritol kicks in, though both brews will likely be better when they’re carbonated and chilled – much like myself.
Off to the server room @ 25.7 ℃ for a couple of days and then out into the cold.
There’s been practically no airlock activity at all for the last 18 hours, seems like this one’s thrown the anchors out as quickly as the other fruit-based brews we did recently, Summer Turbo and Farting Thrush.
This is a good time to check the gravity, and that looks to be just about 0.999. If it doesn’t move in 48 hours then I’m stuffing this into bottles, meanwhile let’s think about what the final ABV could be. We started with 1.028 so 0.999 equates to roughly 3.81% but we need to remember that the 1.028 already included 2.4% since half of my starter was actually cider @ 4.73%. So 3.81 + 2.4 = 6.21%. I don’t know if it’s as simple as adding up those numbers or of there’s more to it based on yeast attenuation etc.
I do know that the trial jar sample was quite nice, maybe a bit sharp with a lingering syrupy sugar taste that wasn’t there at the start, and some definite perlescencepearlescents bubbles which also appeared in the trial jar. And it’s definitely alcoholic.
Time for a quick check-in with the Blueberry and Cherry variants of our own cider, and both vessels are doing OK.
The Cherry is popping the airlock slightly more frequently at every 8 seconds or so, and has a consistent layer of fine foam bubbles on top as well as an audible hissing quality.
The Blueberry is also popping away, but a little more slowly, maybe every 12 seconds. What’s interesting is the continuous formation and disappearance of foam; she’ll spend a couple of minutes building a fine layer of bubbles and then that layer disappears again over the following minutes. No idea what’s going on in there, but I hope it’ll produce some excellent flavours.
Pretty much the same story as when I started Blueberry Orgy earlier this evening; a continuation of Type 25c, tastes nice, probably too much fruit juice. In this concoction:
2 litres Cherry Good juice drink (BBE July 2021)
Water
Cherry Juice from Concentrate
Sour Cherry 20%
Montmorency Cherry 5%
Sugar
Malic Acid
Fruit & Vegetable Concentrates (Carrot and Cherry)
Vitamin C
Flavourings
Sweetener (Sucralose)
300g Brewing Sugar + warm water to 400ml mark
½ teaspoon wine yeast
¼ teaspoon wine nutrient
2.5 litres natural cider
This one is also starting off in a recycled Tesco 5 litre water bottle and will probably spend a couple of weeks in the brewery until the airlock activity stops. Though as yet it hasn’t started. Gravity came in at 1.028 which includes 2.5 litres of cider @ 4.73% – so I’m assuming that 1.028 includes 2.4% already. If we make it down to 1.000 again then we’ll be looking at 6.08% in total, and that’d be just fine.
