Post
by Philipek » Sun May 23, 2010 11:35 pm
Okay so this thread is generally about recipes but there is the word 'techniques' in the title, so see what you think of this.
I call this hyper-turbo cider and I would recommend it to anyone who wants cheap booze but cannot be bothered to sanitize or syphon. Out here in Canada, you can get apple juice in 1.82L PET bottles. Get a few of these bottles and a packet of bread yeast or champagne yeast. Pour out some apple juice, sprinkle some yeast into each of the bottles and screw the lid on loosely. When it stops fizzing, tighten the lid and release gas twice a day, until the bottle stops getting tight. Pour in a table spoon of sugar, tighten the lid, leave for a week and wait until it clears. It might take a while with bread yeast but it will eventually clear and tastes absolutely fine. It's a bit ghetto, but turns out a very respectable cider.
This method was developed from the pop bottle brewery method which I developed with a friend, whereby the brewer harvests a number of 2L pop bottles and takes whatever and ferments it and dispenses from the same vessel. I have the demijohns, buckets, carboys, stock pots and all that jazz. However, I occasionally ferment something weird in a pop bottle like a prune juice apple juice mix. My neighbour is even fermenting a beer kit this way. The fermented fruit juice works fine using this technique when compared to my two stage fermentation process - demijohn, perrier bottles. However, I'll have to wait another week or two for my neighbour's beer kit to condition before I can comment on that.