Homebrew – CiderBock
I finally got the CiderBock bottled and ready to go after being in the fermenter for about eight weeks. This stuff is very easy to make and, like any other venture in home brewing, you can get creative with it as much as you like. I wanted to try something a little different with this cider, so I changed up my technique for back-sweetening it after fermentation. The original gravity of this cider was 1.070. I fermented it with Montrachet yeast and the final gravity after eight weeks in the fermenter was 0.996, which gives an ABV of 9.7%. After back-sweetening, my ABV settled down to 8.6%. The difference in back-sweetening on this batch is that instead of using all apple juice concentrate, I used some brown sugar and pure molasses to create a little flavor and color change. If you compare the color of this cider with my original Apfelwein, you can see that it is significantly darker. It has just about the same sweetness level with slightly higher alcohol content. This stuff also has the same "creep up on you and kick you in the arse" trait as the Apfelwein. It goes down way too easy...
Here is a mock-up of the label I printed for this bottle...
Apfelwein is Ready
The Apfelwein got bottled this afternoon and I'm having my first sample of it now. HERE is my original post when I started this project. My initial fermentation of this produced a very dry apple wine, or cider if you want to call it that, at about 8.6% alcohol by volume. Since this project is primarily for my mom, I knew that the dry factor would not sit well, so I had to sweeten the cider in some way to make it into something she would like. I sweetened it up with some extra corn sugar and some frozen apple juice concentrate. The 'sweetness' is excellent, but it creates a dangerous product here... The alcohol content is still at 7.7% and you can't really taste any alcohol in the drink. You just have to remember that you aren't drinking simple apple juice :)
This stuff is really good, but I plan to continue with some experiments in making it. I'm going to experiment with several types of yeast with different attenuation factors and see what sort of flavors I can come up with using varied yeast strains.
If you are interested in how this is made, check my LOG link on the right side of the page. The complete process is listed...
