Homebrew / Moonshine - Sink vodka appreciation

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Anyone have a recommendation for a cider press for under $300?

I have apples and I want to make some BOOOOOOOZE.
 
Put on your country boy pants and build one!
 
I got a deal on a bunch of syrup thats "Dunkin Donuts Glazed" flavored, i have decided to use this on a test batch of mead, add apples slices and honey and hope the resulting monstrosity tastes like apple fritters
If it kills me, i want to be buried on a hill, with my hang glider, so during zombie times i can attack from above
 
Dfackt0 said:
I got a deal on a bunch of syrup thats "Dunkin Donuts Glazed" flavored, i have decided to use this on a test batch of mead, add apples slices and honey and hope the resulting monstrosity tastes like apple fritters
If it kills me, i want to be buried on a hill, with my hang glider, so during zombie times i can attack from above
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Assuming it's the Mrs. Butterworth brand, this will not work. It contains Potassium Sorbate, which is the chemical we use to stabilize our brews by halting fermentation. This will inhibit any fermentation.
 
You can take care of sorbate by repeatedly aerating the must. Whether you think it's worth it to use commercial apple juice (or Red 40/canola oil/corn syrup flavoring) is another question entirely.
 
Hantavirus said:
You can take care of sorbate by repeatedly aerating the must. Whether you think it's worth it to use commercial apple juice (or Red 40/canola oil/corn syrup flavoring) is another question entirely.
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Aeration alone won't eliminate sorbate. You have to pitch multiple batches of yeast, aerate heavily, then rack the must off each batch of yeast. Sorbate isn't just magically carried off by aeration. It has to bond to yeast and then be allowed to floculate and racked off of. Really not worth all the effort just to use some artificially favoured syrup in a brew.
 
Troonos said:
Assuming it's the Mrs. Butterworth brand, this will not work. It contains Potassium Sorbate, which is the chemical we use to stabilize our brews by halting fermentation. This will inhibit any fermentation.
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It was not, and inspection of the ingredients list did not include potassium sorbate,
It is early on and I suspect there will be a little bit of yeast stress later one, but everything is bubbling happily
 
Jack Keller recommended repeated aeration as the "easy way" of removing sorbate over a period of several months (!!) using wild yeasts to consume the preservatives. He used sourdough starter as the "hard way" if you wanted to get it out in a hurry.
 
Since we're on the subject of stabilizers in juices, have any of you guys made skeater pee and if so how? All the lemon juice i can find has potassium sorbate or other stabilizers in it. The only brand I could find that didn't have stabilizers was a hippy brand that was hand squeezed by a virgin, and cost way to much.
 
Why not just buy a bag of lemons and squeeze them yourself? That's what I do when I make limoncello, you could do both from the same bag in fact.
 
Honored guest said:
Since we're on the subject of stabilizers in juices, have any of you guys made skeater pee and if so how? All the lemon juice i can find has potassium sorbate or other stabilizers in it. The only brand I could find that didn't have stabilizers was a hippy brand that was hand squeezed by a virgin, and cost way to much.
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Get a hand squeezer, fresh lemon juice tastes way better than bottle stuff by default.

Looking up a few recipes, the idea sounds really cool. I'm almost out of my cranberry/blueberry wine (Update on that below), so I'll give this a shot, maybe this weekend.


I forgot to update regarding my Blueberry/Cranberry Wine, it's heavy on the alcohol so if I aged it it'd probably taste less like lightning, but it turned out ok. I can't tell you the exact ABV since my wife broke my graduated cylinder and trying to measure in my 1 gallon carboys is a pain. Given that two glasses knock me well into stumbling over my words territory I think it fermented to completion at 10%

Zero blueberry flavor, but the cranberry comes through in the aftertaste. It has a pretty gemstone coloration like red glass. When I try again I'm going to go all in on the cranberries, might throw in some bell pepper or a poblano to see what happens.
 
Honored guest said:
that was hand squeezed by a virgin
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As the others have said, you'd get the same thing if you squeezed them yourself (sorry couldn't resist).

TAX: Bottled some cider (used the organic honeycrisp apple juice from Food Lion and the yeast from the green pack in the Red Star variety pack, didn't add hops because I'm an impatient retard). Did a taste test, and it's alright. Gonna let it set in the fridge for a couple weeks and see if anything changes (unless that's a bad idea).
 
Don't put hops in cider, hopped cider is a nü-brewer hipster invention just like modern ultra-hopped "IPA" beers. Have you added stabilizer or bottled yet? Racked off the lees? Planning to keep it still/backsweeten/bottle condition it? If you just toss it in the fridge still on the lees in the secondary, it's only going to turn yeasty and nasty pretty quickly. You can age in secondary by racking into a new carboy then putting it back in a cool, dry spot, or you can bottle it. Stabilizer (metabisulfite or sorbate) is optional unless you want to backsweeten and keep it a still cider, then it's not a bad idea to put something in there to kill any residual yeast or nasties that would feed on the sugar. Adding a small amount of sugar (usually dextrose but anything will work) then bottling before all the yeast dies off is the traditional way to bottle carbonate.

I have started a batch of arancello by peeling a bag of oranges, getting as little pith as possible, and tossing it in a jar under a quart of Everclear. In a couple weeks, I will add simple syrup and water to dilute to around 25% ABV, and a little less sweet than the usual limoncello. This has left me with a large quantity of peel-less oranges, and I am thinking about making an orange mead. My last batch of mead was a strong and quite dry still batch, unflavored except the hint of clover from the honey. It is over a year old, and I am probably going to crack a bottle some time this summer then let the rest keep aging.
 
Hantavirus said:
Don't put hops in cider, hopped cider is a nü-brewer hipster invention just like modern ultra-hopped "IPA" beers. Have you added stabilizer or bottled yet? Racked off the lees? Planning to keep it still/backsweeten/bottle condition it? If you just toss it in the fridge still on the lees in the secondary, it's only going to turn yeasty and nasty pretty quickly. You can age in secondary by racking into a new carboy then putting it back in a cool, dry spot, or you can bottle it. Stabilizer (metabisulfite or sorbate) is optional unless you want to backsweeten and keep it a still cider, then it's not a bad idea to put something in there to kill any residual yeast or nasties that would feed on the sugar. Adding a small amount of sugar (usually dextrose but anything will work) then bottling before all the yeast dies off is the traditional way to bottle carbonate.

I have started a batch of arancello by peeling a bag of oranges, getting as little pith as possible, and tossing it in a jar under a quart of Everclear. In a couple weeks, I will add simple syrup and water to dilute to around 25% ABV, and a little less sweet than the usual limoncello. This has left me with a large quantity of peel-less oranges, and I am thinking about making an orange mead. My last batch of mead was a strong and quite dry still batch, unflavored except the hint of clover from the honey. It is over a year old, and I am probably going to crack a bottle some time this summer then let the rest keep aging.
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i have the same issue, years ago i made arancello with blood oranges, i was not equipped for mead or wine so i had an ape brain moment, removed the pith and threw the skinless oranges in sugar wash vodka for a few weeks, half pummeled, the resulting "bloody screwdriver" which sat at ~40% ABV was hilariously weird
 
I bottled and gave out my cherry/peach strongwine, and literally everyone was blown away by how smooth and delicious it was. And I work with serious fancy foodies, they were like ‘oh man this is amazing’.
To recount, I brewed a wine with brown sugar, cherries from my own tree, and quality canned peaches. I brewed that wine and fortified with peach brandy, cherry schnapps, and everclear. I backsweetened with local honey and infused with herbs and spices. And after letting it sit I was left with ~5.5 gallons of this actually really good stuff.
Both fruits come through, it’s very smooth, the flavors are amazing, it’s just sweet enough, but I only expect it to get better as I don’t drink stuff that hard usually so after gifts what I have left will last a long while.
So, resounding success with that one. It was a lot of work compared to my earlier projects but worth it in the end.
 
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VeteranOfTheRetardWars said:
I bottled and gave out my cheery/peach strongwine, and literally everyone was blown away by how smooth and delicious it was. And I work with serious fancy foodies, they were like ‘oh man this is amazing’.
To recount, I brewed a wine with brown sugar, cherries from my own tree, and quality canned peaches. I brewed that wine and fortified with peach brandy, cherry schnapps, and everclear. I backsweetened with local honey and infused with herbs and spices. And after letting it sit I was left with ~5.5 gallons of this actually really good stuff.
Both fruits come through, it’s very smooth, the flavors are amazing, it’s just sweet enough, but I only expect it to get better as I don’t drink stuff that hard usually so after gifts what I have left will last a long while.
So, resounding success with that one. It was a lot of work compared to my earlier projects but worth it in the end.
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Nice recipe, I would never have suspected cherries and brown sugar to pair well, but fortified wine as a whole is in that liqueur area where flavor and booze come together and make something tasty that can get even people who shy away from hard spirits into that sweet spot dint
Brown sugar is very slept on for fermentation, almost everything I use it in leaves me with a subtle Molasses taste

I must now make mead with canned peaches and brown sugar to see what happens
 
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