An important part of WIB since its inception has been our homebrewing community. We never cease to be amazed by the creativity, talent and sometimes utterly bizarre creations they come up with, using the ingredients from our shelves. We've often said we wish we could share the brews that make it to our monthly homebrew club with the rest of the world, so now we are!
The challenge for our homebrew club in June was 'non beer'. And the group really went for it! We had drinks from cordial to wine, cider to sloe gin, Kvass to Tepache...including lots of explosive openings; the floor was as sticky as a student nightclub where too many snakebites had been attempted to be consumed! Below we have the two non beers and one beer chosen as our favourites by our homebrewers.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
First up is a turbo cider with a difference from Hereward Feldwick (aka Woody). We’ll leave it to him to introduce himself and the drink…
I started my brewing career about a decade ago with some very primitive turbo cider. I didn't do any bottling back then, so I would produce 25l barrels of very strong, barely drinkable cider with a four-day shelf life. My housemates didn't thank me. I dropped out of brewing for many years, and then got back into it a couple of years ago, getting properly into beer this time – so this is my first turbo cider in about seven years. I think generally, my brewing chops have improved since then, and this is also by far my best turbo cider. It's surprisingly drinkable for something so crude!
For anyone wondering what makes it turbo – turbo cider just means cider home brewed from commercial apple juice. Not classy. Not clever. But incredibly easy, cheap and quick. And sometimes drinkable – especially if you put some elderflower in it!
This turbo cider was fermented with Voss Kviek, a Norwegian farmhouse yeast famed for its ludicrously fast fermentation at absurdly high temperatures. I chose this yeast because I only had a week to get something ready for Brew Club... but it is also meant to impart some fruity, citrus flavours to your brew. I'm not sure how much of that I got, but it must have added something to the end product.
It was a small batch, but could easily scale up if you've got enough elderflower nearby.
Elderflower Voss Turbo Cider
Yield: 6 litres OG: 1.058
FG: 1.000
6.5% ABV Fermentables:
6L commercial apple juice (cheap boxed stuff: from concentrate, but never 'juice drink' which may be artificially sweetened)
200g demerara sugar
sugar for priming
Additions:
10-12 heads of elderflower, cut close to the base of the umbel to minimise the amount of stem that gets in
2-3g yeast nutrient
1.5g dried Voss Kviek yeast
Method:
Cut your elderflower. Check it for insects and remove any obvious crawlers.
Heat 2l apple juice to 80C in your kettle/pot, dissolve the sugar in, and add the elderflower heads, flower-side down.
Add the rest of the apple juice to bring the temperature down, heating if necessary to reach 40C.
Dissolve in the yeast nutrient, then dry pitch the Voss at 40C.
I fermented in the kettle, with a lid on. Feel free to transfer to a fermenter if you prefer. Voss needs to ferment hot, ideally around 35C, so the real challenge here is temperature control. I've got a heat pad, which on full whack kept it around 30C for the duration. If you don't have a heat pad and you're doing a smallish batch in a smallish vessel, bring it 40C and then stick it into a warm (but switched off) oven. The oven is pretty well insulated and should hold its temperature well, but you will want to check in on it periodically and switch the oven on at a low temperature for 15-20 minutes at a time.
It started at 1.048. Voss was in full swing after 24 hours. After 2 days it was down to 1.010, and intensely heady with elderflower. After 4 days it was finished at a bone-dry 1.000, and the elderflower was now a bit more muted. I reckon I could have bottled it after 3 days (Voss is fast!) and that might have kept more of the aroma.
Strain into a priming vessel. Batch prime with 28g table sugar to about 2.5vol, and bottle.
48 hours later, it was fully carbed and ready to bring to brew club.
This could easily be done with cider yeast or conventional ale yeast, but allow a more conventional time frame for fermentation and carbonation – a week for each. Yeast nutrient is always recommended for cider, which otherwise is prone to stalling (although you're probably fine with a fairly modest ABV turbo cider like this).
....................................................................................................................................................
Alban Howeld returns to our recipe blog for the second month in a row. Before turning his hand to beer, Alban started by making cider so is an old hand at this, we’ll let him explain his process, in the style of an old school science experiment, obviously...
Real Apple Cider
Aim: Make some cider.
Apparatus: Food processor, cider press, cider yeast, fermenting bucket, hydrometer, air-lock, bottles, caps and capper.
Raw materials: Approx 1200 small to medium apples, fermenting sugar, sanitising agent
Method: Pick apples (I didn’t wash them as I wanted to keep the natural yeast, but I did remove any nasty rot or creature-infested portions). Sanitise fermenting bucket. Roughly chop apples and blend them to a pulp in the food processor. Put the resulting pulp in to the cider press and squeeze until your eyes pop out of your head. Pour juice in to the fermenting bucket and repeat until all apples are pressed and you have a mild case of RSI. Take hydrometer reading, add cider yeast, attach air lock and leave in a cool, dark place (my cellar). Take hydrometer readings regularly (and taste) until fermentation has finished (about 2 weeks). Sanitise bottles and add about 1 gram of fermenting sugar to each bottle. Store in a cool dark place (guess where) and sample regularly until the sharpness has softened.
Results: I didn’t weigh the apples but ended up with approx 23L of clear, dry, lightly sparkling cider. OG was 1.040, FG was 1.000. Priming sugar adds approx 0.25% so FG is around 5.5%.
Conclusion: This fermented apple-juice stuff could catch on!
Footnote 1: The apples could probably be deemed organic as no fertiliser or pesticides of any kind have been used in at least 20 years.
Footnote 2: The cider definitely softens with age. The sample tasted at WIB was approximately 18 months old.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Stuart MacDonald has been brewing for nearly five years. He’s brewed 25 beers (with only a few disasters!) He focuses on IPA’s and pales but has also made elderflower champagne and has some Tepache (fermented pineapple with chilli) fermenting away at the moment. He started brewing with kits and extract brews on his hob but is now brewing on a Grainfather, with a SS Brewtech fermenter.
Indian Pale Lager
IPA fermented with Lager yeast
5.7 EBC
OG: 1.06
FG 1.01
ABV: 6.6%
~40 IBU
5.7kg Pilsner
0.3kg Cara-pils
0.3kg Vienna
10g Magnum (12% AA) 60 minutes
10g Equinox (15% AA) Boil 15 min
30g Equinox Whirlpool
30g Cashmere (8.5% AA) Whirlpool
60g Equinox Dry hop (3 day)
70g Cashmere Dry hop (3 day)
7ml Phosphoric acid (75%) into mash.
1/4 tsp Protofloc @ 5 min
SafLager W-34/70 - 2 packets. Fermented at ~18C