Ahhh….it’s been 2 weeks in the bottle and so I decided to open up a bottle and have a little taste of the Australian Pale Ale made from the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale Kit. If you remember, this was done in the beginning of July and it’s been about 1 and a half months already. Not really optimal but I guess it should good enough for a sampling. My friends will be receiving their beers next week and I really need to ensure that at least, it would taste like beer. And I am not disappointed.

Here are the photos:

Nice colour, good head and yes, solid carbonation.If you would compare the colour to my previous batch (actually my first batch), you would see that the colour here is lighter and more golden. This is the result of less boiling during the wort making process which would darken the colour and reduce the “goldenness” of the final beer.

Another shot of the beer. This time with flash.

The head. Alas, the head didn’t last long. It went down in about 10 minutes or so. This could be due to the amount of dextrose I added as this will thin the beer and thus there will be less head retention. Too bad. I actually wanted to use more malt instead of sugar but due to cost and the problem with too much sweetness in the beer, I decided to use dextrose instead. Do note that the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale kit is already not that bitter in the beginning and if I add more malt, it may become just too sweet to be a real beer.

Now, for the taste. In my opinion, it tasted quite good. Pleasant drinking without the usual kit twang which we often get from kits. At least I didn’t taste any off flavours or harshness in the beer. As I mentioned before, this batch was done with 1kg of dextrose and I was expecting some strong alcohol harshness, but I didn’t feel any in the beer. That is definitely a good thing. It stills feels a bit rough on the edge but I guess it could be due to the fact that the beer is a bit green. A little more aging and it should be prefect. Overall, it is great. I am sure that my friends will like this one.

Yup, you guys must fed up to hear me saying that I will be doing Edwort’s Apfelwein time and again but yet I was still making beer. Trust me, I am quite fed up as well. What to do, my friends wanted beer. But this time, I am quite sure that I will be finally making Edwort’s Apfelwein and with a twist. One of my friends had bought an Ice Apple Wine which he claimed tasted extremely nice and he wanted to find something smiliar to it. I didn’t actually drank it as he had already finished drinking the entire bottle. If I am not wrong, the wine is from Pinnacle and you can read more about this wine in this link. Anyway, from the site, it states that it is made up of 6 varieties of apples blended together. This got me thinking that instead of using just one type of apple juice to make the Apfelwein, perhaps I could use several different brands of apple juice as a blend? I was sourcing NTUC and Sheng Shiong and other local stores and I discovered that there are indeed a lot of different types of apple juice being sold. Initially I wanted to do an Apfelwein using Fuji apple juice from Vecool, but now I am thinking of using the Vecool juice as the base (majority of the blend like 50%) while mixing with 4-5 other types of apple juice. I am sure that this will turn out interesting.

Anyway, this should be the recipe for the Apfelwein:

1. 10 litres of Vecool Apple Juice (Fuji Apple Juice)
2. 2 litres of Marigold Apple Juice (100% Juice)
3. 3 litres of Ceres Apple Juice
4. 4 litres of Cyprina Apple Juice
5.  2.3 litres Berri Apple Juice
6. 2 litres Just Juice Apple Juice
7. 2 x 5g packs of Red Star Cote de Blanc Yeast
8. 1kg of Dextrose
9. Yeast nutrients

The 1kg of dextrose should add a little more alcoholic kick to the entire thing. I just hope that it won’t thin the wine too much till it becomes like drinking plain water. The yeast nutrients should help the yeast along as it is known that apple juice don’t provide enough nutrients to the yeast for a healthy fermentation. I also used 2 packs of yeast instead of just one. The reason is that I don’t want the wine to taste too cidery, although it is supposed to be a hard cider. I would like it to taste more like a wine instead. I think the most likely reason for the cidery taste is due to unhealthy yeast. Note that all the juice have to be free from preservatives or it won’t work as the preservatives will kill off the yeast before it can do it’s work.

Now only if the local home brewing shop starts carrying wine bottles and corks, everything would be great. Too bad, we don’t have any stores in Singapore selling these wine making equipment. I will have to bottle my wine in either glass beer bottles or PET bottles. It certainly doesn’t look that nice.