Apple Wine Brewing

139 days ago

It is time for making some tasty apple wine. I am not too sure whether the correct term is apple wine or cider though. Normally if using apple juice, it should...

It is time for making some tasty apple wine. I am not too sure whether the correct term is apple wine or cider though. Normally if using apple juice, it should be called cider. But the alcohol content of cider is pretty low – about 5-7% alcohol at most. This time I am making a high alcoholic beverage using apple concentrates (to get the increased sugar content), so it should be more like a wine. Anyway, I will call this Apple Wine. As I said it is made from apple concentrate I bought from Cold Storage and it actually smelled pretty good. Better than the other apple juice I had bought. I am guessing the problem with the juice we have in Singapore is that they are not of good quality? Since the Tree Top Apple Juice concentrate is actually made for the US market, it would be better? Conspiracy theory I know.

Anyway, I use the Tree Top Apple Juice Concentrate and added one pack of Harvey Fresh Apple Juice.  It made about 1.3litre of apple juice must. So I should be getting about 1 litre of apple wine in a few more weeks.

Used the Welch Grape Juice PET bottle. And look it is all cloudy. When you see it all cloudy like this, you would know that it is still fermenting. The carbon dioxide produced by the fermentation process will push the yeast all over the container, hence it becomes very cloudy.

Bubbles. I love bubbles. Bubbles mean that everything is fine. As you can see there is no krausen or any scum ring at the top. That is because there wasn’t much of any krausen formed. Just a small amount during the beginning stages and it more or less all disappeared by now. Maybe I move the bottle too often and the scum ring got dissolved or something.

This has been bubbling for 2 weeks already and it is still bubbling. Initially after pinching the yeast, the airlock activity is about 30 per minute. Very very active fermentation. Now it has slowed somewhat but still about 5-6 bubbles per minute. I had used the Young’s Cider Yeast which is meant for making ciders. It is supposed to make the beverage more “refreshing”.  Hope that I made the right choice as I have never used this yeast before.