Still Smarter

(see if anyone gets the reference in the subject - it's very obscure...)

Happy Sad day today...

Last week I discovered that nearly 40 litres of home made cider had gone bad. It's been maturing nicely in 2 kegs, keeping them pressurised, making sure that there was pressure in before drawing a pint of etc.. Normal stuff. This cider had been in the keg about 12/14 months and was fanstastic, not too dry, and was just getting better but sometime between xmas and last week I lost both kegs.

On sunday night I drew a 1/2 pint from one keg, it tasted terrible - not like air had got in an turned it to vinegar. just not nice, really not nice. Tried the other keg and it was worse...

so, I walked away, closed the door on my brew room and just left it...

This evening I needed to wash a fermmenter for my next batch of corn so I took the opportunity to empty the kegs... 40 litres of lovely looking cider swirling down the drain...

so a sad day.. but

This morning my next batch of cider has started to bubble and ferment. So that's good.

Tonight I stacked the last 2kg of sugar and root ginger into my fermenter for the next ginger ale (14% ginger ale - awesome dark and stormies..) so I washed the old keg out for that too...

So right now
I have 25 litres of ginger beer within a month of racking off
I have 25 litres of cider within a month of racking off,
I have a 60 litre fermenter clean and prepped for corn..
and I have a three clean kegs...

So happy sad!

I don't get your Happy Sad reference,- unless it was Tommy Cooper?
Actually, I'll have ten bob on that, what odds are you giving?
Your Ginger Ale intrigues me, please stick a recipe in the recipe section, this I have to try!

Robert.

It has all come back to me.
Tommy Cooper waiter sketch.
Dining area and kitchen, and a swing door.
The Happy room where you are Sad, and the Sad room where you can be Happy.

Robert.

Classic comedy of the day.
Although I didn't appreciate the humour until he was dead.
And what a way to go.

Robert.

making sure that there was pressure in before drawing a pint of etc.. Normal stuff.

What were you pressurising with?

Easydrinker wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 10:49 pm Actually, I'll have ten bob on that, what odds are you giving?
Your Ginger Ale intrigues me, please stick a recipe in the recipe section, this I have to try!
Robert.

Sorry mate - you owe me ten bob - It was a reference to a song in Addams Family the musical. Happy Sad !
I'll write the recipe out tonight, right now it's just in my head.

Mash wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:34 am

making sure that there was pressure in before drawing a pint of etc.. Normal stuff.

What were you pressurising with?

C02 - all my kegs have S20 valves on them. I always gas them up before drawing anything off just in case the sealing washer in the lid has let anything past.

I'd just left them too long. Entirely my own fault - I'm not drinking enough !

OK, it was Nasty and Nice, not Happy and Sad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDepSSb_pNg
Old timers must be setting in.

I'll give you five bob if you post your Ginger Ale recipe.

Robert.

Recipe posted...

Thanks for the recipe.
I owe you five shillings.
Just messing with heads of some guests here.
I know, I am bad.

Robert.

And to bring Happy Sad to a conclusion ...

Two of my kegs are full so my brew room is once more a happy place !

Kegged the ginger ale a week last sunday and tonight I kegged the cider. Split 5 litres of cider into a bag in a box which is in the fridge. The cider is about 13/14 % and not quite as dry as normal (finished at .998)

It's been a while since I've not had a fermenter in the brew room but now the outside temp is coming back up I can put them back in the garage.
Oh - and the barrel is now leak proof once more

See as cider it may not have tasted good, but WTF, I just distill bad batches of wines or meads that don't come out good to recover the alcohol..........

I never waste good alcohol. The rest of it can go straight down the sink, but not until it's been run............

Glad that 32_16 is happy again.
But agreeing with phantom, I don't waste alcohol that I''ve worked for, even if it means more work!
I have been banging out a beer a week for the last year, and sadly a couple just don't look like they are going to come good.
They will be distilled to see what I can make of them.
If only handwash, it is not a waste!

Robert.

Funny in the past we have mentioned various uses for heads and /or junkahol, but never ever hand wash. It now seems to be very popular...

I wait to be corrected but I thought the pectin in apples was more likely to increase the amount of methanol fermented.

While you'd need to drink a lot of cider to ingest enough to have to worry about it to me distilling it isn't worth the risk given how cheap it is to make.

32_16 wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:12 am I wait to be corrected but I thought the pectin in apples was more likely to increase the amount of methanol fermented.

While you'd need to drink a lot of cider to ingest enough to have to worry about it to me distilling it isn't worth the risk given how cheap it is to make.

Don't recall pectin causing methanol per se. I seem to recall it being more about the fibre.

But in any case, methanol produced is a small amount and it comes off first in the foreshots so it's not an issue.

The risk being minimal........

Calvados and Eue de vie de pomme, ( and probabably others), require cider to be distilled.
I am not understanding 32_16's concerns?

Robert.

I have re-read it. Still unsure. Cider has clearly pickling his noggin. Maybe he had a point. We may never know.....

I had a little google of methanol in apples and came up with this interesting link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19846293

I say interesting because, it suggests pasteurising the apple juice reduces the methanol content of the finished product after fermenting.

I posted too soon. This paper is much more interesting, a good read if you are housebound.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/H ... ion_detail

Only read first paragraph........

But much of this thing about methanol is right because IT IS a potential hazard.

Yet most of the scaremongering tone of some posts still relates back to US prohibition.

So, yes there were unscrupulous types who just wanted to make as much $ as they could. They are known to have adulterated Ethanol, plus there's some info that departments of the US government of the time also left some of that out there, so they could use it as an advertising warning about moonshine.

Except we now have a lot more info about it and how such an issue is avoided etc.........

So you just have to make sure about removing your foreshots and ignore that governments won't dispel the scare stories as they hope it will prevent stuff being made.......

We're more knowledgeable and enlightened, so use that experience to your benefit IMO (cos that's exactly what I've done since starting)...........

My take on this and no one is wrong with their approach (unless you have already gone blind from drinking your spirits and then you were way wrong..)

In a normal wash (sugar / corn / molasses / grain etc) you know it's not generally possible to get methanol - the required "ingredients" (?) aren't there. But with cider you actually know the conditions are there to produce methanol - yes, with a lower boiling point the majority will come of in the foreshots but as you know ethanol is still present (in lower concentrations) at higher temperatures - so the methanol will be doing the same thing, yes it's lower concentration but it will still be present.

The point about calvados is well made - but most commercial houses have been doing it so long they know exactly what they are doing, how to minimise the methanol in the wash etc.

And as cider is so cheap to make (under a tenner for 25 litres) to me it was just not worth the risk.

Just my 2p worth

Many good points in this thread.
What Phantom said was pukka.
I read somewhere that fermenting ANY fruit with pits/pips in was safe, even if then distilled, but to distill the pulp would
raise the Methanol level in the distillate.
Anyone reading here has a modicum of intelligence.
Use common sense and stay safe.

Robert.

HAPPY / SAD.
.

HAPPY my Gin has turned out to be the best thing I have made so far. I am actually impressed.

SAD... it's going down so well that I am going to run out very soon!

Need to get another wash going. Just waiting for the Horse Mokasses to turn up and I'll have a go at some Rum.

Ele

Was it Dickens who wrote words to the effect of,"Happiness is expending your last breath with your last penny."?
Or was was it I, before chopping it up to say , "Happiness is drinking your last drop along with your last breath"?
It is a fecker when you run out and still want it!

Robert.