home brew cider

whitser

finished our home brew project. made 30 litres all in all. we have brews fermenting that contain nowt but apples juice and some with added sugar,some with honey and some with honey and sugar.
is bubbling away nicely and you can smell the alcohol off it.
question is there a way to measure the alcohol content with some sort of gauge or alcometer?

BeerNut

Yes, it's called a hydrometer and any homebrew supplier will sell you one. However, you need to have taken a reading before fermentation starts -- you're measuring how much of the sugar the yeast has processed, so you have to know how much sugar there was to begin with. I don't think there's any easy way of finding out what the alcohol content is now.

oblivious

Apple juice will give you a starting gravity of some where around 1.054-1.055, at a gravity of 1.050 this will produce around 6% alcohol as cider ferment out dry.

Since you added additional this will raise the alcohol, I generally prefer not to add additional sugar but each to their own

How much sugar did you add to the 30 liters?

rubadub

Have you any idea how much sugar you added, we can have a stab at estimating it if you have. e.g. apple juice is around 10-11% sugar, and roughly 1kg per litre. If you added 1.5kg of sugar to 30L then that is 50g per litre, raising it to ~15-16% sugar per Litre.

If it is fully dry it means all the sugar is fermented out, then you can get tables online to estimate the finishing %. Honey is around 75% sugar by weight.

Hydrometers measure density of liquids, home brew ones usually have a "potential alcohol" scale too, in the beginning it is thick with sugar and the hydrometer floats high up, maybe to 15% potential alcohol. Near the end it will float less showing maybe 5%, then in the end it will be at 0% or below.

You can get vinometers where you pour the finished brew into them and it estimates the finsihed % but they are not very reliable.

whitser

thanks for help lads. in one 5 litre demijohn we put in half pack of sugar, half bottle of honey in another and half sugar and honey in the other. so we've 3 5 litre demijohns with something added and 3 containing only pure apple juice. we had a good mix of eating and cooking and crab apples.

oblivious

That going to be stong

whitser

oblivious wrote: »

That going to be stong

good.

Quint

I made cider with a kit from Easons about 10 years ago. Measuring the alcohol was too hard so we didn't bother our arse. We put ours in 2 liter coke bottles and it looked like ****! But it was absolutly fantastic! We got fairly drunk after 1 bottle of it, so reckon it was about 6 or 7%. But it was probably 3%!

rubadub

whitser wrote: »

thanks for help lads. in one 5 litre demijohn we put in half pack of sugar, half bottle of honey in another and half sugar and honey in the other. so we've 3 5 litre demijohns with something added and 3 containing only pure apple juice. we had a good mix of eating and cooking and crab apples.

OK, lets say the apple juice is 11% sugar. If it was a branded apple juice this will be on the packet under "carbs of which sugar". Most demijohns here are 1 imperial gallon ~4.5L.

Lets say you added 4.5L to the first and the half bag of sugar (500g). The sugar will take up room and increase this volume a bit, but just say it went to 4.7L. That is 4.5Lx11%=495g sugar + 500g, so say 1kg.

using this http://www.brewhaus.com/Calculators_s/46.htm
you plug in 1kg and 4.7L and you get 12.5% potential.

Your straight juice is a simpler conversion, at 11% you do not need to know volumes, just plug in 11kg per 100L 6.5%

When alcohol brews it produces alcohol and carbon dioxide, roughly half and half by weight (alcohol weighs less than water per litre). Also depending on conditions you affect the ratio of alcohol/CO2

Adding that much sugar is not really too advisable, it doesnt taste too good, though sugar does actually make a fairly "clean" brew, hangover wise, it produces only trace amounts of methanol & other nasties (cogeners). Amateur Distillers (and good professionals!) use sugar brews due to this. However apple juice is already high in natural methanol, and the pectin produces more upon brewing. So get the solpadeines in!