On the Rocks Apple Cider

When I went to the local brew shop and got a cider, I didn't want any fancy cider as I've never brewed one before so got what I saw as a straight forward normal cider.

After reading the instructions I needed sugar and I wanted dextrose and not table sugar, but I couldn't get back to the brew shop for a few days, I also needed some scales and I was waiting for my new RAPT Pill, a couple of weeks later I had everything ready.

On Saturday 1st June I started the cider brew, my first plan of action is to wash out my pressure vessel, previously I've been using chemclean but I still had some vwp cleaner sterilizer so I would use that to start.

Before I've used too much cleaning solution in the pressure vessel and it ends up too heavy, so this time I was going to use a small amount and just do a lot of shaking and swirling, with two tablespoons of vwp in the bottom of the fermenter I added about a gallon of warm water and then gave the hole thing a good shake to make sure every nook and cranny gets cleaned
After I gave the pressure of vessel a very good clean on the inside so I thought I'd give it a bit of a clean on the outside as well before sanitization.
Reusing the vwp cleaner and sanitizer I poured this into the mixing bucket to give this a good clean the repeated the lot again but with chemsan sanitiser.

Now I've given the fermenting vessel a good clean with sanitizer it's just a case of letting it drain out, in the meantime I set about calibrating the wrapped pill, It was sat in the water for ages before it stopped moving.

With the RAPT pill set I put the tin in boiling water to soften the syrup.

The instructions called for the sugar first in the fermenting bucket, and all I could think of was lumpy after adding the syrup, I weighed 1.3 kg of dextrose sugar and added it to the bucket.

With the sugar in I opened the tin of syrup and poured it over the sugar and as I waited for the kettle to boil I gave it a stir, and yes it went lumpy, but as I rinsed the tin and poured in the boiled water the lumps went away.

I then filled the bucket with more boiled, then cold water until the 23 litre mark, cider syrup is not as thick as beer malt, interesting.

I then transferred the brew to the fermenter, and I still haven't got a tap on the bucket so this was slow, I added the yeast and gave it a stir then dropped in the RAPT pill before sealing the fermenter and put it under the stairs, I wanted to try a closed transfer with gravity so lifted the fermenter high, connected the spunding valve and a bottle of water to see the bubbles.

The brew looked very clear at the start at 3 pm on Saturday but the next day at 7:40 am the pressure was up to 5 PSI, and on Wednesday it looked like this.

The RAPT pill chart.

The brew should be ready after 5 to 7 days when the gravity drops below 1.000 and looking at the RAPT pill chart it was ready, the gravity was under 1.000 since late Thursday.

On the Saturday I disconnected the spunding valve and connected the beer wand to fill bottles, one of the drinks I like is lucozade orange and I saved a few bottles as I wanted to try the cider in them.

After removing the labels I dropped a measure of sugar in the four bottles and filled each with cider using the beer wand, I then squeezed each bottle to push out any oxygen, twisted on the lid and gave them a shake to mix in the sugar and quickly the CO2 in the cider filled out the squashed bottles I then put the bottles on a shelf under the stairs to sit.

I wanted to try gravity closed transfer, I took my empty cleaned keg and dropped a measure of sugar, I filled it with CO2 purging out any oxygen, next time I will use the free CO2 generated by the brewing process.

I connected fermenter and keg gas to gas line, and the beer to beer line with an inline filter, and as soon as I connected the beer line to the keg the cider started to flow very slowly.

As the cider flowed in to the keg the gas flowed in to the fermenter pushing out the cider nice and steady.

Then I gave everything a clean and ready for the next brew, I still need to make some labels but today the 13th looking at the bottles under the stairs my cider has changed colour again and looks like this.

HAPPY DRINKING.