Another Batch of Hard Cider

My second batch of cider is now fermenting: the airlock is gurgling happily.

Ingredients:
5 gallons apple cider (without preservatives)
3-5 pounds brown cane sugar (3 pounds will produce less ABV, 5 pounds a higher ABV)
1 vial champagne yeast

The most important step is to sanitize all of your materials--the primary fermenting 5 gallon bucket, the airlock, a long-handled stirring spoon, the hydrometer...everything. Wash everything well with StarSan. I even wipe down my counters, because inevitably I put the spoon or lid down on them without thinking.

Once everything is sanitized, heat one gallon of the cider to boiling. Stir in the sugar and boil for several minutes, then turn off the heat. The mixture needs to cool to close to room temperature--you may let it cool on the stove or put it in the fridge. (Or, if you are a beer-making pro, you can use your sanitized wort-chiller).

Pour the remaining apple cider into the 5 gallon bucket, letting it splash to aerate the mixture. Next, pour the yeast in, then pour the cider/sugar mixture in, again letting it splash to aerate.

At this point, if you want to check the potential ABV (Alcohol by Volume) content, use your hydrometer. With 5 pounds of sugar in the mixture, my reading is around 1.20, which will mean a 9% ABV when finished. To make a lower ABV, use less sugar.

Close the lid and affix the airlock, then move the bucket out of the way for a week to ten days to ferment. As the yeast consumes the sugar--turning it to alcohol--CO2 is released, which is what makes the airlock bubble.

After fermentation is finished (usually 7-10 days) I let the cider sit for another two weeks to clarify. The flocculent--dead yeast--settles on the bottom of the bucket.

When the cider is clear, you have three options: Keg it, Put it into a secondary fermenter, or Bottle it. I am kegging part of mine and bottling part. I'll write abou that in a couple of weeks.

Ways to Conserve Water

Water conservation is one of the first, low cost, low effort ways to reduce your footprint on the grid.

Certain areas of the United States--the Southwest and more recently, the Southeast, experience drought conditions which prohibit or put limits on water use--such as watering your lawn, your garden, or your outdoor plants.

Not only are there restrictions when a drought is declared, but the cost of your water increases. There are several
ways to minimize this cost.

Your Appliances and Fittings

To help conserve water, appliances such as your dishwasher and washing machine should be EnergyStar compliant.

Rainbarrels
Rainbarrels are typically plastic or wooden containers that collect runoff rainwater from your roof, either by sitting on the dripline or by having a gutter spout attached. There's netting/screen on the top to prevent insects, a runoff valve that can be attached to another barrel or pointed to ground location, and a lower valve that usually has a hose connector.

This is the easiest, most cost-effective way of conserving water.

Greywater
Greyater Systems make use of household waste water that comes from sinks, showers, tubs, and washing machines. Waste water (toilet water) is not suitable for collection, obviously.

Greywater can be used for many things, such as toilet flush water, water for the lawn and gardening.

For more information on greywater, see these sites:

Wikipedia

Pure Energy Systems

Oasis Design

Next topics in this series:

• Installing a Rainbarrel


• Overview of Greywater Systems, including how to build your own

So I'm now raising a pigeon.

Did you know:

Pigeons mate for life and once nested, lay two eggs at a time thus raising only two chicks at a time?

Well, the cat got one and I'm raising the other.



This started because our house is starting to fall apart more quickly than I can renovate it. (On the outside, at least, from the winter. The previous owners had aluminum siding put on so that the house is enclosed in a safe and tidy sheath of thin metal plates, but the eaves--that bit right under the edge of the roof--are starting to fall off, so there were plates missing. Holes in the armor, as it were, and it reached the tipping point where I had to get on the ladder and remove the rest rather than waiting for them to fall over the next year.)

Um. So I removed most of them, revealing a few water-damaged boards, but more importantly, that the house was more solid than I had expected. Solid enough for pigeons to be roosting in the eaves, I found out, as the nest and a pair of young squabs tumbled down.

Climbing down from the ladder, I saw that they were fine. I put them in a small handy container then went inside to look for something more suitable.

I found a larger box with a lid. On my way back out I ran into Poppy--Jessica's feral rescue cat--coming in the house with one of the pigeons in her mouth.

You'd think that there is some amount of furious cursing and vitriol that would make a cat blanch and drop dead, because I haven't cursed creatively at anything like that since the service, half my life ago. She froze, startled, but she wasn't going to give up her prize. She disappeared quickly.

So now there's one, living in a neighbor's borrowed coop. He's almost an adult but can't fly quite yet. He's mostly feathered and quite handsome actually, very dark with gray highlights. He likes to be held, coos, and will roost on your arm happily while his shredded-paper nest is changed.

Jessica has named him Dingdong. He'll fit right in with our special-ed menagerie.

You know what's killing America?

Shrink wrap.

Everything's shrinkwrapped. I'm opening a box of blank DVDs right now. The entire box was shrinkwrapped, two times. It's a five disk box, but they threw in one free, so had to shrinkwrap the thing twice.

Then, inside the box? More shrink wrap. Each DVD of the jewelcased DVDs is shrinkwrapped, with one of those little plastic tab pulls that you see on cigarettes.

That's a lot of plastic that comes from a lot of petroleum.

And all completely unnecessary. It's the cheap stuff that's going to be the death of us. It's so cheap and we're so lazy and accustomed to it that it's going to be too expensive in the end to clean it all up.

Happy Earth Day.

Spring. It’s time to plant.

Late March is the perfect time to plant in Alabama. The weather has warmed to the 60s and 70s during the day and the nights are typically in the 40s and 50s. We’ll still get a cold spell before April 15, as we always do, but it's nothing to worry about.

The Alabama Cooperative Extension System provides a good deal of informative material. My favorite is their yearly Alabama Gardener’s Calendar, which tells me exactly what tasks I need to do for my yard and garden each month. My other favorite resource is the Gardening in Alabama forum on GardenWeb.

After a trip to my favorite garden shop in Birmingham—Libby’s Plant Odyssey—I planted two blueberry bushes and two blackberry vines (two of each because they need to pollinate each other, I was told). Libby is a fount of knowledge all things flora.

Over the past week I’ve planted vegetables, mostly in pots: tomatoes, cucumber, squash, zucchini, eggplant. I have two pots of each, and more in the ground next to a trellis. I'll be planting more--I'm germinating sweet corn right now, and plan to add polebeans and peas.

Tool Review: The Makita 5090D Cordless Mini Circular Saw

I've lusted for this fine piece of machinery for years, longingly looking at it in the hardware aisle of Home Depot or Lowe's. My reasoning for not spending the ~$120 on it was that there was always a bigger, more general use tool that cost about the same or less, that I needed.

I finally bought one. And just like many of my other fine powertools—the DeWalt reciprocating saw, portable drill/driver, Porter-Cable 16 & 18 gauge brad nailers with air compressor, etc. etc. etc.—when I finally had it in my hand working on a project, I could not believe that I’d lived without it for so long.

The 5090D’s main talent is cutting trim, quickly, precisely, and in a small space. When you first rev the trigger and the small blade whirrs, you’re thinking “Yeah, this isn’t going to cut a pencil.” But it goes through pine trim like butter. It cuts composite, 1x boards, and even 2x boards without trouble, though cutting a 2x will use the battery pretty quickly.

It’s a versatile tool, too. It’s handy for cutting PVC pipe for plumbing.

Pros: Small, lightweight. Great for small and precise work.
Cons: Not unlimited battery power. As with all portable tools, get yourself an extra battery.

Renovation is good for you.

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