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E. & O. E.

Pete’s Pint Pot is dedicated to the home production & sensible drinking of beer, wine, cider & meads plus a little bit of china painting & a few bits of photograph tampering.

If you are affected by any of the articles on this site or any of the issues raised in them, I truly feel sorry for you.

Finally the sanity clause: As Chico Marx

famously said to brother Groucho,

“Everybody knows there ain't no

Sanity Clause!”

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* Piggy-back Cider Recipes

ine & cider making, like brewing, can be great fun at home, even from kits & there is a vast range of these available to-day, fortunately it is very hard to find a bad one. They are mostly pretty reliable too, but designing & drinking your own creations is by far the most rewarding.

When it comes to making you own booze, wines & ciders are generally much easier to make than beer. All the ingredients you require for basic recipes are a can of “concentrate” or three cartons of supermarket pure fruit juice (no artificial colouring, flavouring, preservatives or sweeteners), some sugar & a sachet of wine yeast. Normally a quarter tea-spoon of yeast nutrient will help (or a vitamin B tablet), as will a teaspoon of Bentonite (dried mud granules - honest!), this will help the wine to clear after fermentation. Careful recipe design can mostly avoid the use of additional acids.

Cheap kits:- Solvino & the Brewmaker “Essential” range are both outstanding in this price range.

Expensive kits:- I consider Beaverdale to be the best available, California Connoisseurs have a large range to choose from.

ALL kits, like other home made wines, benefit from “bulk maturation”. After racking your finished wine into a sterilized demijohn, add a crushed Campden tablet (prevents oxidation & inhibits bacterial growth) cover with cling film, secured by a rubber band (this will allow any gasses to escape safely). Store for at least a month (three is much better) in a cool dark place. During this time the wine will mature, developing subtle aromas & flavours, suspended yeast & other assorted rubbish will also settle out giving a “star-bright” wine. Bottle & wait another 3 weeks or so before drinking. A lot of manufactures seem to omit this information, perhaps they know how anxious we are to enjoy their wares.

If you would like to try designing your own beer, wines & ciders you can download my FREE calculators from the www.yobrew.co.uk/calculators.php web page. Different versions are available for Microsoft Excel, Ashampoo PlanMaker & the free OpenOffice programs. You may also find the article on basic beer, wine & cider recipe design at www.yobrew.co.uk/card.php useful.

SWEETNESS: For finished wines & meads there are several degrees of sweetness, most people seem to have their own definitions, thus rendering the system fatally flawed. So here are my (fatally flawed & arbitrary) definitions which may appear in the site, they mostly increase in nice, easy 5° steps:

Style	Dry	Medium Dry	Medium	Med. Sweet	Sweet	Desert
Final Gravity	<998	998-1005	1005-1010	1010-1015	1015-1020	1020+
Approx. sweetening sugar (g/4.5 litre)	0-50	50-130	130-200	200-260	260-310	310+

IF SWEETENING A WINE/MEAD/CIDER ETC. WITH SUGAR YOU MUST ENSURE IT IS STABLE BY ADDING POTASSIUM SORBATE (E202). This should also be used if stopping fermentation early to give a sweeter wine. Another method of sweetening wine is to “feed” it with sugar every time the S.G. approaches 1005, eventually the yeast will be rendered useless, unable to ferment any more sugar, leaving a sweet wine.

Artificial sweeteners may be used, these are especially useful for people who are “watching” their weight, diabetes sufferers & of course those who just want to sweeten their wine without adding stabilizers, replacing one chemical compound with another. I don’t know how stable sweeteners such as saccharin & aspartame are when used in wine but there are products aimed at the home brewer/wine maker market. Because of the health risks associated with SOME artificial sweeteners I personally avoid them (they also tend to leave a nasty lingering taste in the mouth).

DO NOT sweeten beers, ciders etc. with sugar as this could lead to exploding bottles!!