Over the last two weeks a concrete base has been made for the tank to
sit on. The tank will have a built in advantage, due to the ground
behind the cider house being about 3 ft above the floor level inside
the tank room. This height difference plus the the height of the
concrete base for the big new tank means that it will be possible to
gravity feed from it to the 6 IBC tanks in the tank room, after the
first stage of fermentation and blending.

On seeing the big tank nearly in its place behind the ciderhouse I’ve
had several onslaughts of my favourite daydream – to jump the 7000
barrier and grow the business. Several times now I’ve paced out the
area available, and could easily imagine another 4 or even 5 of the
6000 litre monsters sitting there. Now that would look a proper job,
an impressive sight indeed, like a mini Westons! Well I can tell you
emphatically, that dream faded away for ever this week. Circumstances
have forced me to work at the rate that would be required by an annual
output of 18,000 litres. It has been very tiring and time consuming.
I’ve shipped 38 x 20 litre boxes over the last week, delivering by
day and often packaging well into the night. I could never keep that
up on my own, especially not with all the book keeping needed by the
liability for excise duty.

Reality has dawned! But how did this happen? Warm weather created a
surge in demand from the pubs. I did some extra marketing and gained
four more outlets. Silly really, but I can’t help myself doing it.
Then in parallel with this there have been several good orders for
festivals. It seems to have all come at once, but it has had the good
effect of bringing me down to earth. No more daydreams, I will stick
to my 7000 litres, it is a job enough for an old un !

There is only 2000 litres of draught left for this year, so I could
even have a rest period before pressing starts, or at least find some
to make improvements to the equipment.

It was good here today! This morning I acted as collection point for
ciders destined for the Gillingham ( Dorset) Football Club Cider
Festival, to be held on 27 th June ( see wiki ). Last week Barry left
3 of his B-in-Bs for it here. Today I had the pleasure of meeting
Martin Inwood, a craft cidermaker from Bere Regis who had also brought his cider
for the festival. Patrick, the Festival organiser, had arranged to
collect these ciders, together with my own, and was already here when
Martin arrived. It was a sunny morning so it was only natural to have
a little cider tasting in the garden! Martin had anticipated this I
think, as he arrived, bottle in hand. Our first toast to fine weather
was with his latest ‘Lulworth Skipper’, a fine clear golden cider that
had been matured in an oak wine barrel. It was excellent, crisp and
pleasantly oaked. It confirmed that I do like oaked cider after all,
if like Martin’s, the oak is fairly subtle. I can now put the early
bad experience with whisky barrels behind me and move on. I’m getting
to like wine barrel cider! Just as the Monkton Wyld ‘Wider’ delighted
me at Powerstock, Hecks Port Wine has become a firm personal favourite.

I must get one or two ex wine barrels from somewhere before the
autumn. Anybody know where?

Rose

At this time of the year I’m watching the SGs of the keeved ciders
almost day by day, in order to establish when it will be safe to
bottle. We discussed this here last year and a useful rule of thumb
came to light. If I’ve remembered it incorrectly, please somebody put
me right, but I believe that if a one point drop of SG takes a period
of 10 days or more, it can be taken as an indication that the SG is
bottoming out and that it is safe to bottle.

The implication is that for keeving it is important to be able to read
SG to within a degree and therefore reading errors do need to be
considered. I’ve looked in vain for some figures. David please
enlighten me. Say for example the ambient temp is 10 C, how is the
hydrometer reading affected? Regarding errors due to stratification,
that is something that I never would have even thought about. Thank
you Gary, it is good to be aware of it. I will have a gentle stir
before measuring in future, if notable changes in temperature have
occurred.

Continuing the experimental 50/50 blending of the keeved Porters and
Yarlington, I’ve progressed from the demijohn and now have a 120 litre
tub of it. Like the demijohn, this is also holding at 1012. As the
two ciders were well mixed during their blending, I needn’t worry
about stratification. Since the weather has stayed the same for two
weeks, around 15 C every day, there is no difference between
hydrometer readings due to temperature. Another week of similar
readings and perhaps I will feel confident enough to bottle!

I’m looking forward to bottling because I’m dying to try out Barry’s
corker, that he has kindly lent me.

Rose.

On 19 Mar 2009, at 11:11, Gary Awdey wrote:

> On Tuesday, March 17, 2009, David Llewellyn wrote:

>> Apart from the accuracy problem of actually determining small
>> differences while reading along a scale, if the
>> temperature of the cider was much lower at the time of the first
>> reading (ie the cold weather we had weeks ago), it might have accounted for an
>> apparent small change in SG, unless you corrected the readings to 20 degrees
>> C for example. The lower the temperature of the liquid, the higher the SG
>> reading will be, so you have to correct to a standard temperature. Sorry if
>> you have already taken this into account!!
>
> Another cautionary note (with more apologies if you’ve already taken
> this into account) is the effect of stratification. In the past I’ve
> occasionally noted odd readings that go counter to what would be
> predicted by the temperature density effect David mentions. When it is warmer
> you would expect density (and gravity readings) to be lower. What I’ve
> found is that sometimes the warmer weather makes fermentation of keeved
> ciders more active with the result that it is de-stratified. Measurement after
> racking is also occasionally higher than measurement before (I generally take
> samples from near the top). Heavier cider, richer in sugar, is
> mixed up from the bottom when fermentation is more active. This phenomenon is
> mentioned in several winemaking books so evidently it is not
> particularly unusual. When an accurate gravity reading of the entire batch is
> needed (which is admittedly not very often) I make sure the cider is
> adequately mixed by stirring or sparging with carbon dioxide gas (taking care
> not to introduce oxygen at the same time). However I don’t attempt to
> destratify cider that is still sitting on top of deposits that might be
> disturbed. I usually mix blended ciders thoroughly before measuring gravity.
> Otherwise measurement tends to be skewed toward the low side (and presumably the
> opposite would be true if samples were obtained from the bottom of the
> vessel).
>
> Similarly, if two keeved ciders are mixed and fermentation is very
> slow (as one would hope it would be) then you may start with a well mixed
> blend but see measured gravity drop unexpectedly quickly as stratification
> occurs. This would seem to be more likely as a cause of possible measurement
> error if you see a notable drop in gravity without seeing a corresponding
> amount of gas escaping at the airlock.
>
> Gary Awdey
> Eden, New York

I have blended juices after pressing that were then successfully
keeved, but I’ve not blended ciders after keeving. This year I would
like to, because of the considerable disparity between my batches.
This puts me in a dilemma as I’m not sure what the outcome may be.

If I were to set a GCE question on the subject it would go something
like this:

Two keeved ciders whose fermentations are essentially stabilised, one
at SG 1.03 and the other at SG 1.01 are blended together in equal
quantities. What is the resultant SG?

The answer would seem to be 1.02, but is it? I am wondering if the
less perfectly keeved cider would act disproportionately on the high
level of sugar remaining in the well keeved cider and thus drag the
resultant SG down to its own level?

Rose.