And in reading the scoring sheets, the most surprising thing that I noticed was that the cider that I thought was the worst of the bunch, which was the one that used the Lalvin yeast scored the highest of the three entries that I submitted, winning a silver ribbon. While the cider that used the Premier Cuvee yeast scored the lowest of the three, which I thought was the best of the three. So go figure. But this is most certainly motivation for next year, to work on my brewing techniques.

So here is the breakdown of the final scoring:

21A – Vegetable Beer – Pumpkin Ale – Final Score: 29.5/50

27A – Common Cider – Final Score: 28.5/50
Yeast: Premier Cuvee

27B – English Cider – Final Score: 37/50
Yeast: Lalvin 71B-1122

Yes, I know that Rolling Rock is no longer an independent company every since it was gobbled up years ago by Anheuser Busch (so sad). In the beer wars, I’m a Miller kind of guy, but when it comes to Rolling Rock, I’m not that much of a partisan ideologue that I’m going to stop drinking Rolling Rock and give up my summer beer.

With that said, each week I’ve usually been picking up a 12 pack of Rolling Rock bottles, to rotate with my homebrew on tap. But at $11.99 a 12 pack, it’s not exactly a good value play, since my usual value play is a 30 pack of Miller High Life cans for $15.99.

So too my utter and complete surprise this past weekend, the grocery store that I go to just north of my house, had 30 packs of Rolling Rock cans for $15.99. Well consider me sold, over and over again!

Since the last time I saw Rolling Rock in a can, was close to a decade ago in Michigan. And even then, it was only an 18 pk of cans, so a 30 pack is like manna from heaven for me. So until the grocery store stops carrying Rolling Rock in a can, the High Life is getting put on the back burner, since I plan on rocking the box of rocks for the rest of the summer.

Well this year, I checked the State Fair’s website on June 28th (a Wednesday) to figure out the entry process, and talk about looking in the nick of time. This year’s entry deadline was July 1st (a Friday) so I just submitted my entries with only a few days to spare.

I ended up entering three different brews into the State Fair this year, with the breakdown being two hard ciders (one with batch #23 using Premier Cuvee yeast aged less than 1 year, and the other cider used Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast aged for 2 years) and the beer I entered was that pumpkin ale that I kegged back in November 2009.

With my entry application accepted, I swung by the fair grounds on July 23rd, since that was the date to drop off oenology entries. And the judging is going to happen before the fair starts on July31st.

The way that the read the entry form, it seems like the final results won’t be released until after the fair is over. Which doesn’t seem to make sense to me, but maybe they will post the results on the fairs website, when the fair starts in a couple of days. Personally I’m curious to see what the judges think of my entries, since this is the first time that I’ve entered one of my brews into a competition. Wish me luck.

Toward the end of June, I planted some sweet corn seeds in the back section of the left hand side of the garden. Once again, this is a task that I should have completed months ago, but hey C’est la vie. Right now the stalks are about to my knee, so it will be a while before I have any ears for harvesting.

You’ll also notice that I tossed in a bunch of close up shots of the centennial hops. And by the looks of those cones, I’ll need to plan a brew session in the next couple of weeks to take advantage of these fresh cones. I’m think about maybe brewing a Kölsch style beer, with these hops. But since I’m in the pre-planning stage of the brew session, all ideas are welcome.

The cider guy’s schedule is to press the apples on Friday, for delivery to the farmers market on Saturday morning. So this past Saturday morning, I picked up my fresh apple cider order and as soon as I got home I pitched it with yeast.

By the evening the cider was fermenting away nicely (see side notes below). In about another week or two, once the main burst of fermentation has died off, I’ll rack the cider to a secondary fermentor to let the cider clarify for at least 6 months.

Side Notes:
1) I finally kegged two out of the three batches of the 2009 cider. The ones I kegged used the Red Star Premier Cuvee and Cote de Blanc yeasts. Both of the ciders turned out very good, but the Premier Cuvee ended up being just a bit clearer and cleaner tasting then the cider that used the Cote de Blanc. But in the end they both fermented out into a pretty satisfactory product.
2) Another interesting note about the yeasts was that even though the cider is the same cider between all three batches from 2009. The final product was noticeably different depending on the yeast strain that was used. I still don’t know the final results of the cider that used the Lavin yeast, since I’m out of wine bottles and kegs. But for the two different Red Star yeasts that I used, there was a noticeable difference in the final product.
3) If you’re planning on using a wine yeast that comes in a dried packet. Plan on using at least 2 packets (but preferably 3 packets) of yeast when doing your initial pitch of yeast. For this year’s run of hard cider, I only pitched one packet of the Premier Cuvee yeast, but for the Cote de Blanc I pitched two packets of yeast (since I only had those three packets of yeast left in the fridge from 2009). The batch using the Cote de Blanc seems to be fermenting a lot quicker then the Premier Cuvee. But seeing how I used two packets of the Cote de Blanc, this shouldn’t be a surprise. But with wine yeast packets running about $0.59 a piece, plan on shelling out a couple of buckets for three packets of yeast. You’ll thank yourself later on.
4) When I picked up my cider order at 7am at the farmers market, while I was shooting the breeze with the cider guy. He let me know that I wasn’t the only person this year to place a special order for un-treated apple cider. He said that two other guys placed five gallon orders for un-treated cider. So I guess that word on the street is spreading that my cider guy will fill orders for un-treated apple cider.

Here are the final stats for this batch:
OG 1.050
FG 1.000 (as of 08/17/2010)
ABW 5.0%
ABV 6.3%

Fermenting start date: 09/19/2009
Bottle/Keg date: 08/17/2010

Side Notes:
1) For some reason the first taste that I had of this cider, straight from the fermentor, had the smell/taste that bordered on a grappa, which was kind of strange. But the hard cider also had a bit of an acidic start with a heavy alchol finish. But after letting the cider sit out for about 30 minutes to breath, it really mellowed out the acid/alcohol flavors, and become much more drinkable. I’ll ratonalize this oxidation transformation, with the fact that this cider has been sitting in an oxygen free enviroment for the last 11 months.
2) For having waited close to a year, it was nice to finally enjoy the fruits of my labor, and I have to say that it was worth the wait. Its a bit on the dry side, but not too dry. And since I haven’t used dry yeast in a very long time (and I’ve never used wine yeast before), I’m pretty happy with the final results.

I could only resist about 24 hours, before giving this beer a small taste. And I have to say; this has to be my best beer to date. It actually tasted pretty close to something I might have at a local brewpub, which is pretty amazing to me. Overall, I’m really digging on the hint of rye flavor that you taste in this beer. So the recipe for this beer is definitely a keeper in my book.

Red Rye Ale Recipe.

So one weekend (Friday thru Monday night) and 5 pitchers later, we can officially say bye bye to the folks at Anheuser-Busch InBev right before St Patty’s. Yes the keg was free, and I’m not one to turn away a free beer. But I’ve got to tell you, for not liking Bud Light to begin with; drinking 15.5 gallons of the stuff hasn’t turned me from Miller to Bud. But at least now I can finally get back to drinking the good stuff……homebrew!

Final glass from the keg

The final gravity after 7 days was 1.024, when the target gravity was suppose to be ~1.014. But after racking the beer to the secondary, enough yeast was kicked up to get the fermentation going again. I have a good feeling that in about another 10 days in the secondary that it should finish fermenting down to the target FG. I guess only time will tell.

So get a load of this. It’s been about a month since I started fermenting this year’s batch of hard cider. And about two weeks ago, I finally bothered to take an FG reading to see how the fermentation was coming along. And what was the FG on the hydrometer…..it was the same as the OG….1.050. Then I started thinking to myself “What the hell just happened?”

So the first thing that I did was go down into the basement, since I had saved a couple of the apple cider jugs, and my worst fears were confirmed on the label. The apple cider had been treated with 0.1 % of sodium benzoate (an FDA approved food preservative.) So basically as soon as I pitched the dry yeast into the cider, the sodium benzoate killed every last bit of the yeast.

Well now it was time for some heavy research into sodium benzoate, and at first the news wasn’t good. More or less since the cider had been treated with sodium benzoate (a food preservative), no yeast or bacteria would grow in the cider. So this in turn lead me to some more digging online, until I finally found a thread somewhere (might have been on The Brewing Network Forum), where a guy stated that he was able to get cider treated with sodium benzoate to ferment by using a large and active starter of yeast.

This is turn made me think of the process when you use campden tablets (potassium metabisulphite or sodium metabisulphite) to treat cider and kill anything wild that may be still lurking in the cider. I knew that when you use cider treated with campden, that you have to wait until the cider completely “gasses off”, which happens when the sodium metabisulphite is converted to sulfer gas. Which made me theorize if the same “gassing off” process would happen for sodium benzoate.

I stopped by my LHBS, to get the guys opinion if I was “effed” with all my cider. And they were basically in the same boat as JRR, in that I was “effed” and to cut my losses. But at this point I’ve already got the cider just sitting there doing nothing “literally”. So I might as well test out this whole “active starter” theory, in that you basically try to overwhelm the preservative effects of the sodium benzoate with an active starter of yeast. I bought another three packets of wine yeast ($0.59 per yeast packet), and went full blast into this chemistry experiment.

The results after pitching this active starter into the cider have been mixed. Was I able to get the cider to ferment, yes and no? I checked the FG after a couple of weeks and it had dropped to 1.040 from 1.050, which is an OK start, but that only gives me ~1.31% ABV, which is nothing to write home about. Now I’m basically stuck in a dilemma, if I should rack the cider to a secondary and try to pitch another starter batch of yeast and try to get the FG down even more. Because right now, I’d be happy if I could get the FG to around 1.030 to 1.025, this would put the ABV around 3%. Or if I should take my ~1% ABV and call it quits, and bottle my “lite” hard cider. (Update 1-21-10: Of those two options I went more with the first option, in that I just let the cider slowly ferment out, and after 3-4 months its finally at 0.996 to 1.004.)

Side Notes:

• When I noticed gas activity in the airlock after a couple of hours in the fermentor, the gas was not CO2 from the occurrence of fermentation, in that the gravity had not changed in the cider. So in going with my theory, it could only have been the sodium benzoate “gassing off”, kind of like a campden tablet would. It would also seem that once refrigeration was no longer applied to the cider, it helped the “gassing off” process. Since the label on the cider stated that it was treated with sodium benzoate, but that the product still needed to refrigerated.
• A starter is a must when dealing with treated cider, since you are dealing with a product that has been treated specifically to not ferment/spoil.
• Time is off the essence. You need to see what the cider is doing and adjust your actions accordingly.