After the blow off, the temperatures had gone down a bit, as well as the foam in the Hef cider. However, over the next few days with very warm temperatures, there would be several spikes of activity. This created blooms of yeast population which sometimes can affect flavor. I'm unsure if it was due to the yeast nutrient or the volume of yeast I used that caused the Hef yeast to ferment so violently, while the Nottingham didn't.
I'm not sure how much, if at all, the variance in temperatures affected the cider, but Head of Quality Control and Tasting, SWMBO, approved. I get ahead of myself a bit.
On 06-08, after four days in primary fermentation, the ciders were racked to secondary. Racking a brew, whether cider, beer, or wine, serves the purpose of pulling the liquid off the cake of spent yeast on the bottom of the fermenter. The biggest benefit to this is clarifying the brew, but in the case of cider (which is normally fairly cloudy), this helps to remove some yeast and slow or stop fermentation.
A hydrometer reading of both ciders was taken, and I was very surprised that they had reached full fermentation within such a short period. I imagine this was due mostly to the high temperatures. My goal with both ciders was to ferment until around 1.015 and test that to see how the sweetness was. The specific gravity of the Hefeweizen IV yeast was 1.020, which puts it's abv at 4.04% (thanks to me forgetting to raise to original gravity). I fully expect much more change in the gravity since the fermentation was so aggressive. The sweetness level of this cider was approved, so we added some apple juice to top it off and to over sweeten it back up to 1.030. The purpose of this is to compensate for the continued fermentation and drying out during bottle conditioning. The bottles will sit and carbonate for two weeks, where we will open one and test carb levels.
Normally this is a no no. Trying to bottle condition/carbonate sweet ciders will eventually result in exploding bottles. So, as I believe I referenced in a previous post, once the bottles reach the desired carbonation levels, they'll be run through a cycle in the dishwasher to pasteurize and kill the yeast.
The Nottingham, with it's much calmer fermentation was much more efficient. After four days the gravity of the Nottingham was 1.010 and 5.21% abv. The abv is mid-range for the style, the taste was described as a bit bitter and dry. Surprising since FG numbers I found put the notoriously over sweet (still delicious, and SWMBO's favorite) Hornsby's cider at 1.010. I'm not sure if the perceived sweetness has to do with the yeast, or if the numbers I found for Strongbow (FG 1.007) and Hornsby's were incorrect. Either way, my goal was to hit somewhere in between the two and I've succeeded. So far, no fruity, banana, and clove notes were prominent enough to have been commented on.
So, the Nottingham yeast was racked again to pull more of the yeast out of solution and on bottling day had held it's gravity of 1.010. We'll let it dry a bit more, then use the remaining apple juice to sweeten it back up, and then follow the same process as the Hef.
Each brew I make is getting substantially better, and although I did forget to raise the original gravity (I think I may try Hef IV again since it came out well, but add molasses to up the OG and add complexity), they're very drinkable. They just aren't very potent, and that's ok.
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