The Eensy Weensy Cider: One Gallon of Oak Glen Blend Into the Bottle, Heigh Ho!

Six bottles of hard cider bottled and capped from our gallon of Oak Glen cider tonight. The natural yeast just wasn't robust enough, so we added a tiny dollop of English Cider Yeast, and it went to town.

Going into the bottle the cider was very clear and still, after only two re-rackings, so after after a little goose to get the cider to work in the bottle and produce carbonation, into the bottles it went.

This Oak Glen blend was also a little thin on flavor, and tasting like it would be more dry than sweet. Since the cider had only about 8% potential alcohol based on initial sugar -- and we didn't add any sugar -- that makes perfect sense.

Since six bottles of cider is hardly enough for us, we also put down the wedding cider today.

At our wedding we had Trader Joe's unfiltered cider as one of the main libations, and we happened to have six gallons left over after the event. Since our basic corboy holds five gallons with one in reserve for topping up, we have had the cider in storage since the wedding.

A couple of days ago we dumped it all into the big fermentation bottle, along with the rest of the English cider yeast, and let it roll. It is in the "boiling over" stage now, where the yeast eats and eats and eats the cider sugar, and the cider bubbles and foams almost as if it were in a pot on the stove.

There's a good head of foam on the top, and the fermentation lock is going "blurp . . . blurp . . . blurp" just about as fast as you can read this. In a bit we will rerack it to get it off the sediment, and then watch for bottling day to announce itself by slow fermentation.

Funny, but this is the first time we have hardened-up store bought cider, and did so only because we like the TJ cider well enough. Every other year we pressed our own raw cider, and if we did not have enough cider to put down -- or didn't press -- then we had none hard for the spring.

Leslie and I were laughing at ourselves, betting how long we could hold out before we have to crack the first bottle. She thinks we lasted six weeks last time, but that the five gallons we put down was gone by week 16 or so.

I said that if the store bought hardened-up any good, that we would have to put more down almost immediately upon opening the first bottle. I have this fantasy that we could put enough cider down cycle after cycle to not have to suffer being out of cider for any length of time. (Grin.)