Cider Update

I just thought I would complete the story I posted last October.

The cider lived in demijohns and the wine fermenter under bubble airlocks in the loft above the garage until just after Easter.

If you remember March and April were very warm and the winter had been mild, so I was a little concerned that the fermenation would be complete and like the previous year the cider would be flat after bottling (no secondary fermentation), so when I bottled it I primed each bottle with half a teaspoon of sugar.

Finding enough bottles was a major issue. I dug out a load of Grolch bottles that haven't seen the light of day for years - since the late 1980's if my memory serves me correctly and scrubbed around for other suitable containers for the gallons and gallons of cider we made. It was a boring and rather disgusting job washing the bottles as many of them had dead insects and spiders in them! This time I took the bottles to the cider - in previous years I've carried the bottles and the heavy demijohns of cider up the steep drive to the house, bottled it and then carried the heavy bottles and empty demijohns back down to the garage (how silly is that?).

The actual syphoning off of the cider was an easy task and I managed to get a taste of it and was delighted with most of what I tasted. The content of one demijohn seemed a bit watery, but the rest was good. But even after all my searching for bottles I still have one and 3/4 demijohns full of unbottled cider.

Having done that then all there was to do was wait...

Until now - I opened the first bottle 2 weeks ago in mid May - the cider was clear and sparkling and tasted... GREAT!

If you would like a bottle or ten, you are most welcome... Provided I can have the empty bottles back afterwards.