Summer fruits cider

Summer fruits cider had always been an easy brew over the summer but last year my usual summer fruits juice went suger free and I could taste the sweeteners.

This year I decided to use real fruit so I used 1.7kg of summer fruits from aldi (£2.99 i think per 1kg) and added 1kg of slugger then pored over 2 kettled (about 4 lts) of boiling water. Once it was all mushy i blitzed it with my stick blender, added pectolase and campton and left for 24 hours. I then added 5 lrs of apple juice and topped up with water untill gravity reading was at 1.032 (approx 12lts bottled water). I then added wine yeast. The wine yeast should give me a final reading of 1 (sometimes 0.998). I would expect the cider to be around 3.8%

St peter's golden ale

So no post in a while but I need to record this one.

Picked up a st peter's golden ale from Colchester home brew supplies. Sterilised all the kit and got the brew on as usual. Kit should do 36 pintd but I added water to make it 40 pints. This will lower the alcohol from 4.7 to hopefully around 4%.

Given the weather at the moment (it's very hot. Hit 32 today) i decided I didn't need to submersible heater.

The starting gravity was 1.042

There is a hop enhancer in the kit I will be adding that later in the process. This should add a little bitterness and more fragrance