Last night I had a small taste of the two March batches. There was surprisingly little difference in taste between Batch A which has been in the fridge since it was bottled in March, and Batch B which has been in the second fermentation bottle during the same amount of time. Batch A was cloudly, and Batch B was ‘flatter’ though I expect both batches to have little or no fizz because they’re ‘still cider’ batches.  I suppose there’s a third batch which is the 10 or so bottles of Batch A I put in the basement after about a month. Those should have fizz from the tablespoon of honey I added when I bottled them. I’ll call them Batch C though they are actually a subset of Batch A.  Follow all that??

Anyway…

Since Friday would have been the end of the second month since bottling I took today to bottle up Batch B and add 1 tablespoon (aprox. 15ml) of honey to each. I use a measuring spoon and a funnel but its still a bit messier than I’d like it to be and the bottles are filling up before I can get a tablespoon of honey into the next bottle. I will have to think about how to ‘prep’ the bottles before adding the cider because its quite a complicated dance to keep the cider flowing thru the siphon which takes two hands to start, then squeeze out a tablespoon of honey and tip that into a funnel while keeping an eye on the first bottle so it doesn’t overflow.  I tried microwaving the bottle of honey so it would flow better but I just scalded my hands and after the third bottle it was back to room temp anyway.

Oh well, I will think upon it and try something else, maybe go to Demerara sugar though I do like the subtle taste of honey…then I’d have the problem of getting it ground fine enough…

So set your cider clocks for June 15th my friends, I’ll have twenty plus bottles of cider ready for tasting.

I’m thinking I might have to educate some palates in that tasting. I’ve been collecting various ciders from Martins and I can do a little taste test around that date. I am picturing a blind test of my cider against 4 commercial brands.  Five if they bring back Original Sin; it was pulled from the shelf last I looked.  If I win then I’ve got the process down enough to lock it in, if I lose I’ll know what people want it to taste like and tweak in that direction.

I wonder who I can get to come over and taste it though… I wonder…