Doing some final preparation for the trip, including kegging the Cranberry Relish Wheat brewed for this Saturday's early-thanksgiving gathering. I really should have bottled it last week, it would have made good gifts for others to take home. Now the options are do a dicey bottling from the keg (no counter-pressure filler here), just bring a few growlers, or bring the keg. I don't think our host would like the keg, but at least 4-5 of the guests would...
I now have 20 gallons of cider going. So far, I have only done one fancy batch, 5 gallons spiked with a pint of grade B maple syrup. All the others are on their way to being straight dry cider, one with my old favorite White Labs English Cider yeast, another with Lalvin D-47, and some with whatever yeast was hanging out on the apples.
The latter is looking quite promising. The juice came from the October 29 club pressing. I added some campden tablets (2 per gallon, so 60-100 ppm SO2), and a teaspoon each of pectic enzyme and chalk. The chalk was a lame attempt at keeving, which didn't happen, so I will probably leave it out in the future. The pectic enzyme caused the cider to drop clear overnight, and turn readable-through-the-carboy in another couple days. About Wednesdy (4 days after pressing), I took a gravity sample and noted no drop, but no infections either... Thursday, I finally saw some positive airlock pressure and a slight ring of bubbles. Saturday night, it started fermenting visibly, and was raging on Sunday.
One week's a pretty long lag time, but hopefully the sulfites killed most of the organisms that can make a truly wild cider go bad. The best part: while the White Labs English Cider yeast gives of a smell best described as "apple farts", the natural yeast fermentation is still giving off a soft, smooth, apple smell. If that keeps up, I might have to do a natural ferment with most of next years juice, and save the pitched yeast for a backup batch or any pasteurized juice I use.