Yeast starter added Sunday evening about 10pm. Everything mixed well. Some gas is being produced already and it has a frothy head. It is necessary to leave a headspace in the demijohn during primary fermemtation due to the froth that is created.
Both demijohns are really frothing now and producing tons of gas. The airlocks are bubbling constantly. If you look closely at the right hand jar you can see bits. That was the champagne yeast demijohn and all of those bits were constanly in motion, rising up and then falling back down.
Day 3 - fermentation is slowing down and there is a thick sediment. At 6am the bubblers were producing one bubble every 6 or 7 seconds. By late that evening they were producing a bubble every 15 seconds. It's almost time for racking.
Racking - separating the sediment from the fermenting liquid - proved to be a bit fiddly. The siphon broke! And it would have helped enormously if I hadn't have forgotten to bid on a set of 14 demijohns on ebay that were just round the corner from us, so I resorted carefully pouring off the cider from the sediment using 5 litre plastic water containers from the supermarket. They've done the job quite well and for a fraction of the price.
Of course I had to do a taste test too. Not bad at all! The champagne yeast cider was a little less flavoursome than the baking yeast cider, but the latter was a lot sharper. It will definitely need time to mellow, but at this point we were incredibly impressed because it was alcoholic!
The most important bit of secondary fermentation that I had to remember was to fill the demijohn to the neck as too much air can lead vinegar production not cider. To reduce the amount of headspace, I added some sterilised fresh pear juice (which had to be strained as the juicer is too efficient and added a lot of tiny bits of fruit) from newly squeezed pears. It also had the added benefit of feeding the yeast a bit more as they consumed almost all the sugar I add added during primary fermentation already.
Boy did they like the frsh pear juice! They frothed up all the way throught the airlocks in less than an hour, which was not the plan. So I took off the airlocks and put on ballons instead, which would at least contain the froth until it all calmed down.
This morning I got up early and replaced the balloons with sterilsed airlocks as it was clear the feeding frenzy had calmed down.
So now secondary fermentation will take place for a few weeks to finish off all the sugars from the extra juice I added, however I am going to have to rack off again shortly because there is a sediment from the fresh juice lying quite thickly on the surface and now on the bottom. After that I will rack into food grade plastic bottles designed for sparkling drinks and let it mature for a few months.
If all goes according to plan, this cider may be ready to drink around Christmas-time, although some places recommend you leave cider to mature for nine months.
I don't think Martin can wait that long!