Bottled cider batch #2 this morning. Henceforth to be known as “TARDIS Cider (Bigger on the Inside)” Designed the label last night and will be printing and applying later today. I’m hoping there’s a little live yeast in there to eat the primer and give this batch some carbonation. The clarity is very good and the color is a light, golden.

There was no sediment in the growler and very little in the carboy.

In what I sampled, I wasn’t really getting the alcohol. The FG is 0.0995 @ 70F, adjusted to 0.0996 for hydrometer calibration at 60F. The OG was 1.045, so there must be alcohol, right? The calculator says it should be 6.43% ABV. We’ll see. I got 14 twelve ounce bottles and a not full soda screw cap bottle for checking if any carbonation builds.

Frankly, I fear this batch will not have much flavor, not much alcohol and not much carbonation. I hope some time proves me wrong…if only I had a TARDIS, so that I could use it to pop ahead a few weeks to sample this batch! Notes on Cider Batch #4 : I see the airlocks are bubbling! Bucket #1 is going at about 14 seconds and bucket #2 is going about every 10 seconds.

5 pm I looked at the frozen concentrate apple juice at the store and what they had said it could be from China or Argentina. Really?! I went to the juice aisle and bought a 64 oz bottle of Murray’s Apple Cider ( Bonus! It comes in a free, clear glass growler!).

The cider is filtered and pasteurized and comes from “tree ripened, whole apples” in Virginia. No preservatives and no sugar added. Boom!

So, I carefully opened the PFB’s and added 2 cups of juice to each and resealed them. Airlock bubbles started back up with no trouble. The only issue will be figuring out the exact alcohol content, since I did not check the SG after adding the apple cider. I’ll just go with the original and just know that it is a little higher ABV % than I calculate. I’m sure someone could figure it out. The commercial cider’s SG is 1.046 @ 70F = 1.047 adjusted/actual. I added 2 cups to my 1-1/2 gallons of cider in each bucket whose actual SG was 1.053 in bucket #1 and 1.049 in bucket #2. If specific gravities are able to be averaged, then the new SG for bucket #1 would be 1.0523 and bucket #2 SG would be 1.0487. Thanks to my Chemical Engineer spouse for showing me how to do that!

7:15 pm The airlocks have just about evened out at 8 to 9 second intervals.