My cider brewing

Is there any skill you haven't mastered‽

Well time to filter and rack it. Sitting at 8% now, that'll do.

Had a blow out last night. Cider absolutely everywhere. The only thing I can think of is the airlock blocked with some raspberry and then blew through. Ah well! Fingers crossed it won't happen again, the missus was NOT happy about the clean washing in the utility room! LOL!

Hahaha! Sounds good though!

Well, recipes.

Blackberry wine (VERY easy!).

You will need:
blackberries (loads of them)
Sugar
Water
Wine yeast
Yeast nutrient
A fermenter (a bucket with a cloth over it will do in a pinch, but a fermenter with an airlock will give better results)
Something to "rack" it into (demijohns are ideal, but you can use wine bottles, whatever. just make sure the glass is clear so that you can see your brew)
A tube to siphon
Some muslin cloth
Ideally a hydrometer, but not essential

BEFORE YOU START!!! Everything you do, every bit of kit you are gonna use, must be utterly spotless and sterile. This is for your own good, you don't want to breed the wrong kind of microbes! But don't worry, it will be very, VERY obvious when you have an infected brew but if in doubt, PM me!
Use sterilising powder on everything, have an epic washing up session (wear rubber gloves), and rinse rinse rinse and rinse some more.

1) 2-3kg blackberries fora 5 litre yield. You can use frozen supermarket ones but you don't really have an excuse, since they are EVERYWHERE this time of year, go out picking in the hedgerows! Wear rubber gloves (you'll thank me later). When picking, if the blackberry doesn't come away nice and easy, leave it. For info, a Celebrations / Heros / Roses tin when full holds about 2kg.
2) Freeze them
3) Take them out of the freezer, stick them in a very large bowl (or a pan if you have a jam pan), and tip boiling water over them until they are just covered, measure how much water you chucked in (if they are in a pan, stick them on the heat for a bit to get them boiling then take it off the heat, if in the bowl don't worry too much).
4) Mash the berries with a spud masher (don't use a blender unless you like fruit mud)
5) Chuck a crushed camden tablet in and give it a stir, cover and leave to cool
6) Throw the lot into a fermenter (you can use a big bucket with a cloth over it, I use fermentation vessels with air locks, depending on what I am brewing. I brewed this in my glass one with a heavy loose fitting glass lid with a rubber seal to allow it to burp - Wilko's do a 25 litre fermenter with a tap that is a bargain and perfect for this)
7) Make up the mixture to about 6 litres for every 2.5kg blackberries, give or take. Depends how strong a blackberry taste you want.
8) If you have a hydrometer, add sugar until you have a starting gravity of about 1.07-1.08. If you don't have a hydromter, you want about 1.4kg sugar for every 6 litres of liquid for a brew that will come out at around 7-8% if you don't let it ferment too far! Be VERY careful though, you don't need much sugar to make crazy strong brews that sail North of 20% with wine yeast. MIX IT VERY VERY WELL! (top tip: Add a little boiling water to the sugar to make a solution and add that to your brew, it's easier to mix then!)
8a) If you wanna be sexy, add honey instead of sugar. I use a 50/50 mix of brown and white sugar to add some depth of flavour.
9) Add wine yeast and yeast nutrient (you don't HAVE to add nutrient, but believe me, you want to!! Have you ever smelled a rhino fart? Well, thats what it will smell like if the yeast doesn't have the right nutrients. Your choice...)
10) Leave it somewhere room temperature, you don't need it anywhere temperature controlled, but the warmer it is, the faster it brews.
11) If you have a hydrometer, test it every day until you reach the desired gravity (using the starting gravity and the current gravity you can calculate your ABV). If you don't, but you have used an air lock, wait until it stops bubbling. If you are using a fermentation bucket, it's guess work, have a taste, and when it tastes "right", you're done.
12) Siphon from your primary fermenter into your demijohn or wine bottles, using the muslin cloth as a filter. You can tip it from your bucket if you like, but you will make a mess and it's a bit of a pain. Leave the sludge and mess in the bottom, you are just after the liquid, so allow a litre of wastage
13) Stick a cork / top on the bottles / demijohn and stick it in the fridge (this is called cold crashing). If you want, add wine finings (Wilkos have it) to help it fall clear.
14) You will notice after a few days a nice layer of sediment in the bottom. You can either leave it in the fridge, and drink it as is as a "young" wine, pouring carefully to avoid the sediment (it will taste a bit yeasty if you get sediment in your glass), OR...

EXTRA STEPS (PLEASE READ ALL BEFORE DOING ANY OF IT!)

15) You can rack it again with a siphon into another clean bottle to leave the sediment behind if you want to let it age and mature. Just siphon carefully and avoid sucking up the sediment. If you are going to do this, you then need to pasturise if you aren't going to keep it in the fridge otherwise it may ferment further in the bottle, which can create bottle bombs...
16) To pasturise, get a big pan of water, heat it to about 85 degrees C, take it off the heat, pop the bottle in with the lids on, cover with a cloth and leave for 10-15 mins. Repeat for each bottle.
17) Leave it to mature somewhere cool.

IF YOU WANT FIZZY WINE

18) If you want it sparkling, then you DON'T want to pasturise. After you have taken it out of the fridge and re-racked to get rid of the sediment, instead we are going to add a small amount of sugar. This is difficult to get "right" first time. But you want about a teaspoon and a half for every 500ml liquid, assuming you have a completely dry, fermented out wine. If you don't, then you need to know how much sugar is left from your primary fermentation and this needs a hydrometer and some maffs. But we're not gonna do this, cos it's home brew, so we're gonna just give it a go.
19) Pour the sugar into the bottle, but you MUST use bottles that can handle pressure. Champagne bottles with proper corks, or PET bottles, clean fizzy drinks bottles, are all good for this. Give it a shake, leave it somewhere warm, and wait for a few weeks. The longer you wait, the better it will be. If you used plastic bottles, this will be useful for checking the pressure since you can squeeze and feel it.
20) If you have plastic bottles, once they are hard like unopened fizzy drinks bottles, stick them in the fridge to keep it from brewing further (doing this will give you a sweeter, less fizzy brew. If you leave it to ferment dry, you will have a dry, more fizzy brew. It's a bit of an art knowing when to stop the fermentation).


Anyway, that's the easiest brew. It's free, fairly quick, tastey, free, easy, free, fun, free, and, er, free. (apart from the sugar!).

If you want to alter the flavours, you can try:
Adding a couple of good handfuls of raisins to the primary fermenter at the start of brew for the tannins in the skin
Adding some malic acid (powder form) to add bite and sourness
Adding wine tannins for more depth of flavour
Adding apple juice to make more of a cider than a wine
Adding more sugar for a stonger brew
A mix of berries for a more summery drink (save till next year, it'll be lovely by then)

Brewing is a bit of an art, you get a feel for what works and what doesn't. What flavours work for you, and what don't. Most of it hinges on what you have available at the time, and knowing what will go with what. ]

Just follow the golden rules:

Sterilise EVERYTHING - be scrupulous with your cleaning
Don't use ANY ingredients with preservatives in them
Don't try to ferment artificial sweeteners
Give it love and care and pay attention to it
Sample your brews in moderation if you haven't calculated your ABV accurately with the correct equipment - home brew can be frighteningly strong.
Avoid drinking sediments as best you can, unless your stomach is accustomed to it (it's not harmful, it just messes with your guts a bit)
And lastly, PATIENCE! The longer you leave a brew to mature, the better it is. If you try something that is undrinkable, don't tip the rest of the batch away, let it mature out. Time can hide lots of sins!