So, m'troubles and strife tells me that the new batch of sparkling hard apple cider i've just recently made is quite superb. i got the recipe quite a while ago from this website. Turns out, it was really easy. I bought some simple brewing equipment online (a glass syphon, white wine yeast, plastic air locks, bottle caps and a capping device) for around $25 and had my mom send them to me here in Nepal ages ago, and i never did anything with it. So now that Catherine and i are moving to Berkeley this summer, i thought, "This is my last chance! It's now or never!"
The biggest pain was buying preservative free apple juice in Nepal. Most juice here is imported from Australia and is hence loaded with preservatives. i had to go to a local juice shop that sold various fresh juices by the glass. When i told the owner i wanted 40L, he still insisted on selling it to me by the glass. That's how retarded business is in Nepal. He wanted me to buy 160 glasses. So after bargaining in vain for longer than i care to admit, i settled on buying 160 glasses with came to the ridiculous price of NRps 9600! Thats $133! I cajoled, wheedled and threatened to walk away (with this sale he wouldn't have to work for a month and we both knew it!) and finally he grudgingly agreed to give me a NRps 1600 discount from the 160 glass price.
I brought him 2 twenty liter blue plastic water bottles and he juiced like a madman telling me out of the side of his mouth that he would call me when he was done.
I got the call at 9pm. "Your juice is ready!" he triumphantly bellowed through the earpiece of my mobile. "You can come pick it up now!" Nepalis and Tibetans have this peculiar habit of shouting into their mobile phones as if they were calling out across an entire valley. I suppose technically they are often calling from across the valley, but all the shouting gets on my nerves.
"I'll come pick it up tomorrow," i suggested.
"No, no, must come now!"
"It's 9 pm. How am i gonna carry 40 liters of apple juice three blocks to my home?"
"I don't know, but you have to come now!"
"Give me a break. I'll come in the morning."
"No, no, must come now!"
"Why?"
"It will... how can i make you understand... after one hour, fresh juice goes bad!"
So i had to run over to the juice shop at 9:15pm, carry 40 liters of juice back to my flat (in two trips) and pasteurize it all in a massive aluminum pot on my kitchen stove.
Sterilizing my 20L, blue, food-grade plastic water bottles with chlorine, i rinsed them out and then filled them with juice, my trusty white wine yeast and brown sugar (food for the yeastie beasties). I then plugged the bottles with these air locks designed to let out the CO2 and to keep out the O2. You see, the little yeasties gorge themselves on the sugar, breaking it down into alcohol and CO2. So it becomes alcoholic as it starts to bubble. I put in extra brown sugar thinking it would make the cider sweeter. I didn't realize the yeast would eat up all the extra sugar and just make it more alcoholic. Ended up around 15%. About as strong as a bottle of wine.
After 3 weeks of percolating, the yeast finally settled out and out of 20L, 15 were drinkable with the bottom 5L being just a sludge of yeastie muck. I syphoned off the good stuff on top, added a little more sugar, and poured it into sterilized 66omL beer bottles and capped them with my red plastic bottle capper and bottle caps. Two more weeks later, the residual yeast had eaten that last bit of added sugar and in the process had carbonated my cider.
And now it is gold and delicious. And that was only one of my 20L bottles. i have another that i've just left to clarify. i hope to bottle it this week. Just need to find more bottles.
WARNING: Three bottles have exploded. They were all bottles i gave to friends, and i guess carrying them around on the scooter or in my bag shook them up enough to bring the pressure to critical mass. One blew up in Tracy and Kevin's office after i gave Trace-E her due (Tracy was one of our proud sponsors. NRps.1000!). Glad i wasn't there to witness Kevin's potentially Hiroshimic reaction. But the stuff is still awesome! Super tastey, says Catherine.
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