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.
First things first, I decided on a change of approach when trying to keep track of our cider experiments. From now on I’m treating each stage in the evolution of a brew as it’s own brew. For example, if we press 200 litres and they ferment in 4 barrels, then one of those barrels is split into 5 demijohns each of which has a different amount of flavouring / yeast then each of those 5 variants will start, as a brew, at the point where it’s split, and not at the point where we’re pressing. I can use links between those brews, but trying to represent the lifecycle of each bottle right back to pressing leads to a logical tree with a ridiculously thick trunk, and I’d rather have a series of branches tied together with links. I hope this works out … hell, I hope it even makes sense six months down the line. Anyway …
This evening I kicked off our experiment into fruit cider using the last demijohn from our Type 25c batch. I’m calling this one Blueberry Orgy in honour of the original Orchard Orgy Type 25c that provided the cider component, approximately 2.5 litres. Also along for the ride:
- 2 litres of Blueberry juice from Tesco (BBE May 2021)
- Water
- Blueberry Juice from Concentrate (17%)
- Sugar
- Citric Acid
- Flavourings
- Vitamin C
- Sweetener (Sucralose)
- 300g Brewing Sugar + warm water to 400ml mark
- ½ teaspoon wine yeast
- ¼ teaspoon wine nutrient
After measuring the OG at 1.032 (I can call it Original Gravity since I’m starting a new brew, right?) and tasting the sample from the trial jar I confirmed the suspicion that first surfaced when I tipped 2 litres of blueberry juice into the 5 litre Tesco water bottle which I’m using as FV: there’s too much juice, and not enough cider. It didn’t taste overpowering or sickly, but it didn’t taste of cider either. If I do this again I’m going to start with one litre of fruit juice instead of two, i.e. ⅕ instead of almost half.
