Selfsufficientish.com

I am having problems with my wine, but I thought it best to divide this up as it might be a seperate issue.

I'm making hard cider. I put the apple must in a sterilised bucket. A few days later I strained it to remove the pulp and added cider yeast. It was fermenting nicely, then I put it in a demijohn.

It didn't last long before it stopped (maybe a week). I had a clear liquid towards the top and lots of floating sediment towards the bottom.

It tastes watery, like an incredibly weak cider. Virtually no sweetness or alcohol taste. Now I know I didn't add sugar, but as you know, it is perfectly possible to make cider this way.

The demi john is only half full. This always concerns me as I think it increases the chances of bad bacteria, and a watery taste I tend to associate with a turned wine.

Wondering if I should add more apple juice to fill it as much as I can, and a bit more cider yeast?

ANy ideas appreciated

We are currently making apple wine in a half full demijohn so although I can't help at the moment once we rack ours i may be able to give some information which may be of help.
I am also interested in anything mentioned about the affect of having the demijohn half full as we have blackberries in the freezer waiting to be made into wine but only enough to again half fill the demijohn. If the apple wine doesn't work I don't want to waste the blackberries doing the same thing.

It's not recommended as the more air you have in the demi john, the more chance of bacteria contaminating the wine.

If I were you, I would top up with apple juice. Apple and blackberry wine is very nice. Infact, you can buy 1/2 demi johns.

OK great thanks, we'll do that. I love blackberry and apple.
Do we just follow the recipe and through in the apple juice instead of the other half of blackberries at a convenient time?

I would prepare your blackberries, do the initial fermenting in the bucket thing, strain, and when you add the strained must to the demi john add the apple juice aswell.

Now, back to my watery cider. Any advice anyone?????

So JT, what sort of varieties of apple did you use? Did you only use a single variety or a mix?

The fermentation process gives off CO2 which is heavier than air so will be sitting on top of the cider, so unless you're moving it around a lot from container to container then it will do just that, sit there.

If it's fermented out completely then it will be dry, probably very dry. You can sweeten it up with a sugar solution, but only if you're sure the fermentation has stopped or add the sugar to it at drinking time. I'm sure MKG will have more ideas on ways to try and sort it out.