Bottling Cider

After an appropriate amount of time, we bottled the cider. I was alarmed to taste a rather sulphury, sour, not-very-appley product. We went ahead with the bottling, because really, what else were we supposed to do?! Since then, we’ve tasted the result and realized that the champagne yeast we used had a more profound effect than anticipated and it tastes rather a lot like champagne. It also reminds me of Spanish sidra, also a sourish fermented-apple-product. It’s not really cider like I expected, though.

Chris is adding the extra sugar to trigger bottle carbonation.

Johannes is helping rack into the bottling-bucket.

There was a surprising amount of sediment/sludge.

Maybe I should have strained the juice with cheesecloth?

taking my turn with the bottle filler…

… and taking my turn with the capper. The capper is fun, and not as scary as the hand-held one. I never actually torn a neck off a bottle, but it was not unheard-of around here with the hand held capper.