Another Round

This year’s batch of hard cider is finally in play.  The raw stock was unusually sweet, and I boiled it a bit too long, concentrating it even further, which resulted in an unprecedented 9% potential alcohol level when I took my initial readings.  The yeast we’re using these days is very slow acting, so it’s unlikely that we’ll get to a full 9% conversion by bottling time, but it might get there by itself sitting in the bottles, and that may not be a good thing.  It averages six and a half to seven and a half percent most years, and the one year I remember it being eight and a half percent was also the year the alcohol taste became unpleasantly noticeable…

On the other hand, I dropped an unsterilized piece of plastic wrap in it, too.  (Thankfully not the blue cheese wrapper.)  So all sorts of interesting things could happen.  Guess we’ll have a better idea in a week or two.