2016 Notes

11/6/16

Yeast experiment year and possible Cold Crash experiment.


Bought 17 gallons at Pine Hill. $5.25/gallon. Three 5 gal carboys and two 1 gal glass growlers. The 5 gals are all the same blend, doing yeast experiments, and the 1 gals are both the same other blend, doing cold crash experiments.
I've realized I don't know what the hell I'm doing when evaluating the cider blends at Pine Hill. Gotta ask around how best to judge by taste or be a super dork and bring along a field refractometer. This year, the two blends I didn't get was one that was a pretty even mix of a pile of varietals (black gilliflower, macoun, mcintosh, baldwin, cortland, roxbury russet, black oxford, esopus, and tollman sweet) which tasted fine (thick, heavy mouthfeel) and one that was 53% Redfield, 32% reine de pommes, and a bit of mcintosh and a tiny arkansas black. Past experience with Redfield hasn't been awesome and as I've been thinking about Spy's more often I went with those blends.
I did a 30 minute hydration on all the dry yeast pitches and 3.5 hours on the Wyeast smack pack.

5 gal batches:
Blend is '600 gallon tank downstairs':

1.054-1.055, raised 5 degrees to about 1.06 (7.8% or so dry). 2:1 Cane to Corn sugar.

Batch A: Safcider Fermentis yeast - The guy at StrangeBrew didn't know much about this one so it's a crap shoot.
Batch B: Danstar Belle Saison - The guy at StrangeBrew liked this one quite a bit.
Batch C: Wyeast 4632 Dry Mead - This was the closest Wyeast to their typical cider yeast available.

1 gal batches:
Blend is '800 gallon tank downstairs':

1.051-1.052, raised 10 degrees to about 1.061 or so. I'm going to attempt to cold crash this so we'll see where the final ABV falls. I used only corn sugar because I'm using Danstar Nottingham ale yeast.

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