2016 Notes
11/6/16
Yeast experiment year and possible Cold Crash experiment.
Bought 17 gallons at Pine Hill. $5.25/gallon.
Three 5 gal carboys and two 1 gal
glass growlers. The 5 gals are all the same blend, doing yeast
experiments, and the 1 gals are both the same other blend, doing cold
crash experiments.
I've realized I don't know what the hell I'm doing when evaluating the
cider blends at Pine Hill. Gotta ask around how best to judge by
taste or be a super dork and bring along a field refractometer. This
year, the two blends I didn't get was one that was a pretty even mix
of a pile of varietals (black gilliflower, macoun, mcintosh, baldwin,
cortland, roxbury russet, black oxford, esopus, and tollman sweet)
which tasted fine (thick, heavy mouthfeel) and one that was 53%
Redfield, 32% reine de pommes, and a bit of mcintosh and a tiny
arkansas black. Past experience with Redfield hasn't been awesome and
as I've been thinking about Spy's more often I went
with those blends.
I did a 30 minute hydration on all the dry yeast pitches and 3.5 hours
on the Wyeast smack pack.
5 gal batches:
Blend is '600 gallon tank downstairs':
Batch A: Safcider Fermentis yeast - The guy at StrangeBrew
didn't know much about this one so it's a crap shoot.
Batch B: Danstar Belle Saison - The guy at StrangeBrew liked
this one quite a bit.
Batch C: Wyeast 4632 Dry Mead - This was the closest Wyeast to
their typical cider yeast available.
1 gal batches:
Blend is '800 gallon tank downstairs':