Cider/Cyser Making - Day 1
Part 2: Setup and Start
DAY 1 - Saturday, 18 OCT 2008 — The first step was to sanitize everything that could potentially touch cider with Iodophore. I mixed it up in the carboy putting about 2 capfuls in with 5+ gallons of warm water. I let it sit for about 20 minutes. At the same time, I mixed up the same concentration in the brewing bucket and dumped all the equipment (minus the bottles) in. Everything soaked for 20 minutes and air dried for around 20 more.
Then, I put the 5 gallons of cider into the clean bucket and took a specific gravity reading. It read right at 1.050, just like Anita said! Then I added the 5# of honey, stirred like crazy, and took another reading. The s.g. was now reading 1.080. With this gravity, my potential alcohol content is 10.5% by volume.
To the cider and honey, I added 3 crushed Campden tabs to kill any natural yeast and bacteria, and 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. This needed to sit for 24-36 hours to let the Campden tabs out-gas all of their sulfur.
1:00 PM - As the waiting began, I got around to reading the instructions on my yeast bottle. It said that if the s.g. was 1.080 or higher, I would need a starter. I got a little worried that I was going to kill my yeast when the time came, so I called Great Fermentations to get advice. The gentleman there told me that I needed to make a starter to get the yeast going. He said if I shook and swirled the cider mix for a while (like 2 hours) I would send off most of the Campden. Around 4PM, I borrowed another bung and airlock from Adam and made a starter with about 750ml cider mix and the yeast.
Two hours later, the starter was bubbling at around 2 bubbles per minute. I went about my day, periodically checking the progress of the starter. At 9:30PM, it was up to 10/min. 10:30PM it was at 14/m.
