I knew yesterday that I should make a post about starting the primary fermentation but I got distracted by the threat of a late spring frost that had me bringing back in the 30 or so plants I took out last week.

I couldn’t find my packet of EC-1118 yeast that I normally use for cider so I put in the generic stuff that comes with the John Bull cider mix. I’m still cross that I can’t buy apple juice here at a reasonable price but if I bought 20 liters of apple juice it would cost me more than finished cider! So concentrate it is. Maybe when production eventually goes to 100ltrs or so it will meet a price break.

The yeast was a bit slow starting so I put in another half packet and the mysterious ‘nutrient’ packet you find under the lid of concentrate. It looks just like granulated sugar but not really enough to make a difference in a large batch (IMHO) so I looked it up and it’s actually ‘Diammonium Phosphate‘ which is used in a lots of industrial ways, one of which is encouraging yeast growth in home brewing.

I put the half a litre of brewing sugar, the yeast, and the nutrient in a carboy and left it in my study away from near freezing temperatures for about a week. Once the airlock was bubbling away at nearly 1 burp a minute I mixed it, the concentrate, and some warm water into the new primary fermenter I purchased via Amazon. I should mention that all brewing supplies are scarce, I could have started a new batch two weeks ago if I could have found any sterilizer powder for sale. It wasn’t until I found my previous tin of Sodium Metabisulfite that I was able to move forward.

By bedtime a tiny bit of pressure had built up inside the fermenter but it wasn’t burping regularly yet. I have a 30litre tub and it was filled to just past 23litres. I could make more cider in it but I find it gets a bit watery tasting if I do that.

Fast forward to this morning. I open the door of my study and can immediately smell the cider yeast much much too strongly. I see that the rusty brown foam that forms on the top of the cider had pushed its way through the airlock and is bubbling down the side and pooling on the top of the fermenter. THAT means that I had over 7 liter’s of foam form in my tub overnight and this wasn’t even the champagne yeast I usually use! Fortunately, it wasn’t enough to cause alarm but it showed no sign of stopping and the top of the fermenter was tight as a drumhead under the gas pressure. It was still only 1 degree outside so I didn’t open the window but soon as I could I went out to the shed and recovered the carboy I’d used to start the process, cleaned it and siphoned off about a litre of cider. I was glad I bought the primary fermenter with the tap built-in. Made the transfer mostly drip-free. 🙂

I put an airlock on the carboy as well and I plan on reuniting the two batches once the angry bubbling slows back down. I was tempted to make this smaller batch into another flavor but all I had on hand was the dregs of a bag of cider from Lilley’s I bought a couple of weeks ago and wasn’t sure that was a safe experiment after I’d been out of production for a whole year. This is back to basics time my friends but I will add my own signature bits to the secondary fermenter in a few weeks. Fingers crossed!

I am calling this batch ‘Grimstead Green: The Bank Holiday Batch’ because I started it on this past bank holiday and I expect to be drinking it the 31st August, also a bank holiday.