2026-07-20 || Tags: brewing recipe
I followed the same recipe as my first attempt here, except for the following few changes:
The fermentation was extremely fast, probably completely finished in 4 days. Far far far too fast. Initially I wasn't toooo worried as my first attempt also fermented pretty fast (just over a week). But when it came to tasting...
Bad. Just nothing good at all to hold on to. Too sour, didn't carbonate properly, just off & flat tastes all round. I think that this is mostly due to the extremely fast fermentation. I did some reading and research (need to do a lot more!) and discovered that fast ferments generally are not a good thing and are known to introduce off flavours.
The fast fermentation was likely caused by two main things: fermenting on pomace (the blended apples), and the heat wave. The latter obviously not really in my control, but the former is!
From what I have understood so far, the pomace provides lots of nutrients for the yeast (in particular nitrogen). Almost certainly too much in my case. And blending the apples also probably made those nutrients more available to the yeast worsening my problem.
The lack of carbonation I think is just me not giving it enough time doing secondary fermentation. 3 days should be enough, but I think the cold crashing really did remove quite a lot of yeast so I should've given it more time.
No fermenting on pomace! I understand that the skin can provide a good source of tannins, so I might try that, but for next time, no actual apple.
No fermenting during a heatwave. Simple.