Brewing Notes, Edwort's Apfelwein, 16mar2010

Made first batch of apfelwein from Edwort's easy recipe on homebrewtalk forums. Only adjustment I made was to add an additional gallon of apple juice since my carboy is 6 gallons (as opposed to a 5 gallon used in the recipe) and I didn't want alot of headspace.

OG came out a little lower at 1.061 as I only had 2 lbs. of corn sugar/dextrose (the ratio in the recipe would have call for ~2.4 lbs), but I think it will still be plenty strong and hopefully I will like the taste of this stuff, since I will have almost 6 gallons. I couldn't resist making it cause the process was so easy, and it needs to age quite a long time, so why not.

The only other thing is that when I bottle, i'll have to use two bottling buckets since they are only 5 gallons and I will have almost 6 gallons of the wine. But that will work out fine as I can do about 5 gallons sparkling in one bucket (via priming sugar solution), and then have the last gallon still (i.e. no priming sugar in that bucket).

I used Mott's apple juice (no preservatives accept ascorbic acid). I also used montrachet wine yeast that was 2 months past expiration, but I figure it will still be fine as it is dry yeast and has been in the freezer for the most part.