Behold ! The Cooks Un-Patented CO2 Production Measurerererere...
To complete this project you need
1 Upturned Vase
1 Avent Baby bottle
1 5ml Childrens medicine syringe
A length of straw from the insides of a childrens drinking bottle
1 Medicine bung for dispensing childrens medicine from a bottle
some plasticine to close any leaks
From this, I worked out that my cider is producing about 5ml of Co2 in 30 minutes
To Carbonte, we need about 2 Parts Co2 per Volume i.e 9 Litres of Co2 dissolved in 4.5L of cider
So, that's 37.5 Days...blimey ! Better get bottling.
Other issues is final Sweetness tho...
1 Litre of CO2 at 1 Atmosphere weighs about 1.8g so I need 16.5g of Co2
Sugar converts to roughly 1/2 its weight in Co2 when it ferments...so that's about 33g Sugar I need to add in order to self carbonate whilst ending up at the same SG it is today...
So...I'll be sweetnening today/tomorrow to my target of 1.012 (it was that after last sweetening but I guess it's falled since it's been bubbling away again)...then adding 33g and sticking the lot into 2 plastic bottles....in 37.5 Days time I'll kill the ferment with campden unless the bottles have killed the house first ;-) I'll also need to de-acidify it as it's on the acid side...that will probably cause an almightly fizz bomb if I do it at the end of fermentation (as it'll be carbonated hopefully)...so might be needing to do that first..or at least get it slightly less acidic than it is....
Love the science. I went for a more "artisan" approach. I lobbed sugar in to take it to SG1015. Into the airing cupboard until it started bubbling again and then bottled it immediately.
ReplyDeleteThat was 2 weeks ago since when they've been resident in the garage.
This weekend, I fancied a bottle, popped off the top with a splendid noise, and poured myself a gently carbonated glass of most agreeable cider!
Clearly they're going to carry on fermenting slowly and will get dryer, but it's cold out there and it's going to take a long time. By which time I suspect I'll have drunk most of it...
On another note, I've had to bring the latest batch in from the garage as they were slowing right down and I'm not sure it's been going long enough yet for a decent fermentation. I'll see whether 24 hours indoors spruces them up a bit.