Get Ready for the First Cider
Came across a link about just what you guys are talking about.
I was going to post it but I see I've been beaten to it.
But here is the link, if you want ot read it.
I love hard cider, just never made it.
I'm going to do this though, I love hard cider.
Thought I'd share the link. Tring to help out as much as a total newby can.
http://www.winesathome.net/forum/showthread.php?t=30
cheers.
Marv.
I just racked my cider to my secondary. It seems to be coming along ok. Pretty dry, which I expected. I can tell that it definitely needs some more time. I will probably give it a couple of months in the secondary.
I ended up using Trader Joes cider, which seems to be working out well so far.
I just tasted it again, after about 2 weeks in the secondary. It has developed sulfur flavor and smell. I guess this just adds time to the secondary period. I was a bit surprised, though, as I didn't expect this after more than 6 weeks of fermentation.
MMMmmmmm......egg cider.
That is about what the smell was. The taste wasn't quite that bad, but the smell almost knocked me over.
I wonder if its something in the TJ's cider that's giving off the sulfur.
I don't know. It seems odd to me that the smell just developed recently. It wasn't there previously, when I racked it to the secondary. That is kind of what has me the most baffled. If the smell was there when I first racked it, I wouldn't be so concerned, but now that it is there after 2 weeks in the primary, it has me a bit thrown.
Usually with sulfur smells, if they're there at the beginning you're ok, once they develop later, something's going wrong. Lager and most German yeasts produce some sulfer smells, but they usually fade after primary.
I will test it again this weekend and see what is going on then. I hope that I didn't get a contamination or something, but I was pretty careful, so I don't believe that this would be the case.
I just reread the post, after only two weeks I wouldn't be worried, for some reason I read it as 4 weeks total the first time.