I have had the seed of an idea in my head after making a successful cider last year that I would love to try it again, I just need to secure some apples. I woke up in the morning with some spare time, and contacted an orchard to ask if they have apples for making cider available in winter. Much to my surprise they do! So I stopped by the orchard and within minutes had 2 bushels of smallish apples for 28 bucks! I cleaned and sterilized my equipment, then removed leaves from the stems, and rinsed the apples. I grinded 1 bushel, filling a 5-gallon bucket, then squeezed the cider through a nut filter bag (a slow and effort-filled task). Then did the same with the second bushel. After maybe 2-3 hours I had over 5 gallons of cider in the glass carboy. I ended up transferring it to a plastic fermentation bucket because it has more space than the glass carboy, and I was concerned that if there wasn't enough headroom during primary fermentation that the foaming cider would overflow. I added some campden tablets (sulfites) and waited 24 hours before sprinkling a packet of dry cider yeast (which comes with yeast nutrient) and putting under airlock in a lidded bucket.
C7
Specific gravity: 1.06+
Alcohol potential: 7.5%+ (wow! previous cider potential has been more like 5.5%)
1/2 bushel = 1 giant metal bowlful (overflowing)
The plain cider tastes very sweet, and is not dropping nearly as much sediment as my previous apples. My current (probably wrong) theory is that the sediment is mostly starch, which, given enough time converts to sugar. So maybe these apples have been sitting for long enough to convert all the starch to sugar. I think I can test the sediment next time around using the old iodine trick from elementary school.
After 4 weeks of fermentation, the airlock is bubbling once every 10 minutes. The hydrometer reads 1.000, a good sign that it has fermented completely. At this time it mostly has a bit of grain-alcohol taste. It's very cloudy, and dangit, I forgot to put the cap on the end of the auto-siphon, so I slurped up more sediment than necessary.
10/24/22
I don't have much record of this cider, although I did find this photo:
I think this ended up being one that I tried to suffer through drinking some, but eventually just dumped them down the sink. 🙁