Hard Cider

We recently were cleaning up and came across a gallon of apple cider from last year that we had forgotten about.  The date says it is good until November but we usually only drink cider during the holidays so instead of dumping it I decided to just pour it into my new gallon carboy and ferment it.  I also added a cup of light brown sugar to bring the SG up to 1.062.  It should be about 7.8% alcohol when finished.  I plan on carbonating it and adding some additional apple juice or sugar to it to sweeten it after it is done fermenting and then bottling it for the holidays.  I should get about 8-10 bottles which is perfect since I don't drink too much hard cider.

One note is I am also doing a lager while this is fermenting and it makes me miss ales.  It took two days for the lager to start fermenting and this one I was getting bubbles within about 20 minutes.

Brew Day: Oktoberfest

I used some birthday money to buy a Johnson controller for my keg and since it was empty and I had room to fit a fermenting bucket I decided to try my hand at a lager.  I have always wanted to brew a true Oktoberfest since I started brewing but never had all the equipment that I need.  Being a lager it needs to ferment at around 50 degrees and then be stored close to freezing to "lager" for at least 4 weeks.  I also have learned how picky lager yeast can be.  They need lots of Oxygen in addition to a much larger volume of yeast to ferment the same 5 gallons.


Since this was my first lager I decided to keep the actual boil easy and just use extract instead of all grain. 

 Here I am steeping the grains for 30 minutes.

 And finally here is the wort boiling. 

 

Finally on 9/10 after 5 weeks of lagering, the Oktoberfest is finished!