Monday, November 30, 2009

The technical term for it is wine

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I made a little bit of hard cider. This is very easy to do: You just put yeast into a bottle of apple juice--having first made sure it contains no preservatives. Preservatives do their thing by stopping the growth of yeast, among other things.

I like my hard cider to be bubbly, so I do the fermentation in the original bottle with the cap on tight. One must remember to relieve the pressure fairly often so that the bottle does not explode though!

The first batch was going well, so when it was close to being done I started a second batch by pouring a little of the first batch into the new one.

I was relating all of this to a few of our younger guests (high school and college aged) and suggested that when this last apple batch finished, I planned to inoculate a bottle of white grape juice. It was purchased for a party, it didn't get drunk and our kids don't like it--so it seemed like a good way of getting rid of it.

"Wait"! One of the young guests said, "You can ferment grape juice"? He may have regretted the words before they were fully out of his mouth: Not due to me though. I am gentle on youth. I said something like, "Yeah, sure you can". rather than the title of this post. And yes, I did think of the mean answer before I replied.

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