My first cyser?

[wayacoyote]

Update on Cider Vinegar:
One batch has done nicely and now has a healthy mother.

As for my suspition of freezing a "starter", when I racked (actually I filtered as I'm not worried about clarity) I froze the solids. A week ago, I started a new batch and broke off the smallest chunk to drop in the half-gallon of apple cider. By the next day, it was bubbling like mad. So it does work for what we're trying to do.

Now I need to freeze some "mother of vinegar" from my first batch. I've also read that you can dehydrate a mother, so maybe I'll try that, too.

[papa bear]

good to know

[beemandan]

I did as I originally said. Cored, peeled and processed my apples. Came out to about a gallon of 'stuff'. Added 5 qts of honey, 2 g of water and two packs or D47. The resulting stuff was too thick to get an OG....whenever you released the hydrometer it would remain. That was the end of Aug. It fermented seriously for a couple of weeks.

I attempted to rack today. It was too thick. Too thick to take a specific gravity too. I wound up pouring it into a carboy....added loads of oxygen and lost about a gallon or so in the process. I suppose that I'll let it sit for a month and then I'll have to pour it through a filter bag to get anything worth keeping. I know, I know I should have put the apple stuff in a filter bag. Unfortunately my only bag was already seeing service with some blueberries.

The blueberry melomel on the other hand looks to be quite a success. Started in August with a couple of gallons of fresh, crushed blueberries, 5 qts of early season, light honey, 4 gallons of water and EC1118. OG of 1.1 I racked it yesterday. What I sampled was very good. Specific gravity of 1.000 Excellent color.