Well, on the first day of March I finally bottled the last of the 07 batches – a keg of strong single-variety Roxbury Russet cider (9%) which I put up still in Bordeaux bottles, and one of the curiously sweet stuff from blended juice I bought from Poverty Lane. The later I carbonated to about 25 psi (at garage temperature) and put in cap-able champagne bottles. Two kegs, 8 carboys, and a couple buckets full of random cider equipment are corralled in the corner of my office, ready for next fall – cider season begins again in about 7 months. Of course, by that time we will have built a gate, fenced the new orchard, and planted or transplanted about 27 trees, so I’m sure the time will go quickly.
Running the counter-pressure bottle filler is starting to get tiresome, and while filling bottles I’ve been tinkering in my mind with a design for a two-position semiautomatic counter-pressure rig. The basic idea is to have one bottle filling while capping and replacing a second. A further refinement involves a valve and a sensor on each one (either weight-based or capacitive) such that the flow of cider is cut off automatically at the right point and the bottle begins to decompress while you’re doing something else. I’ll see if I can pull it off before next December.
