Breast Flashing Cider

We are pretty close to the one year anniversary of my famous Cider Drinking and Breast Flashing blog post. Remember that?

Good times.

Today I found a bottle of the cider in one of my beer fridges, and decided to drink it as my New Brew Thursday drink (see just about any of my untappd articles if you need to know what that means).

The cider is still not as good as my beers, but it is not too bad, and I think people who drink hard cider might like it. Maybe.

I am pretty sure this is the last bottle of my "Breast Flashing Cider". I should probably make some more.

This year, as far as I know, no drunk female hockey fans have pulled out breasts and flashed them to any opposing teams' players in or out of the penalty box. Of course the Canucks were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs so maybe the crazy Vancouver chicks just did not have the chance to get to it.

Another taste of Cider (without the breast flashing)

Had another bottle of my homemade hard cider tonight. Check out "Simple Hard Cider", "Bottled Cider", and "Cider Drinking and Breast Flashing" as a reminder about the cider.

I think it is better than it was. It probably needed that little bit of age. I even had this bottle warm. I think it would be even better cold. I went ahead and put the rest of the bottles in the fridge so that next time I try it, it will be nice and cold. I'm not sure how long this will last, but I'll try to report back as it is in the bottle longer.

Cider Drinking and Breast Flashing

You may recall that around the beginning of March, I "brewed" a batch of Simple Hard Cider based on a couple of episodes from Basic Brewing Radio.  A couple weeks later, I reported that I had bottled the cider.

Several days ago I tried some.  It was pretty tart and dry.  I didn't get much apple flavor from it, or really much of any flavor other than "tart".  I had been stuffed up with a cold and thought I may just not have been able able to taste because I couldn't smell.   I probably should have waited from my first taste.  I did think the carbonation was about perfect, which was something I had no idea about when I bottled it.

Tonight, I was feeling better, so I decided to try another bottle. It was still tart and dry. I got a little bit of apple and just a touch of what might have been cinnamon. I guess it was whatever they spiced the "spiced cider" with.  It was ok. Not great. If you are ever visiting and what to try it, let me know. I will most likely still have some for you to try.

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I feel like I should make some sort of funny statement about the Vancouver fan who flashed Ben Eager in the penalty box last night.  Unfortunately, I've not been able to come up with something all that amusing to say.

I'm sure there are great jokes to be said about "the twins". I'm sure we can say things like "no wonder Eager spent so much time in the penalty box". I'm just not clever enough to nail those jokes. I bet you can find a bunch by going to twitter and searching for "vancouver flasher".

I've been cheering against the Canucks, mostly because they beat the Hawks in round one. But another reason I can't cheer for the Canucks is those stupid Green Guys who are always there (although they were not there last night). I guess if the team is replacing the Green Guys with the blond breast flasher, I might have to reanalyze my policy against the team.  Of course, she did get kicked out, so maybe I should not reconsider after all.

I cannot quite figure out how taking out your breasts and rubbing them against the penalty box glass in front of the opposing player communicates your dislike of that player or his team.  I assume Ben likes to look at breasts. Most guys do. I am sure he liked that view better than the upside-down back-side of a man in a green spandex body suit.

Just saying ....

by the way ... I don't own either of the photos of the Vancouver fan. I also don't have permission to use them. Yes, I am a terrible person. But to give credit where credit is due: I got the first one from 25stanley.com, the article "Ben Eager des Sharks se fait flasher par une fan des Canucks". I am not even sure where I got the second photo from. It is all over the place, so I might even be considering it public domain at this point.

For what it is worth, I took the picture of the cider, and I do own the photo. If you want to use it in your own blog, go ahead.

Bottled Cider

I put my gallon of simple cider into 10 12oz bottles tonight. I used 3/4 tsp sugar in each bottle to carbonate the cider. The cider ended up with a 1.003 finishing specific gravity, which comes to 5.9% alcohol (by volume). That is over 93% apparent attenuation.  Obviously, cider is more fermentable than the beers I usually make.

I did not take a taste, but the aroma reminded me a bit of La Folie.  It will be interesting to see how this turns out.  Based on the aroma, I think it might be a bit more sour than I would think a cider should be.  Obviously, I won't know for sure for awhile.  I should probably let these bottles condition for a long time, but I know I'm going to want to try some sooner rather than later.

Simple Hard Cider

The guys from Basic Brewing Radio have recently done a couple of videos about a really simple hard-cider they tried.  I think they mentioned it in a couple of their "radio" podcasts as well.

The recipe for the cider is really simple.  The ingredients are:

1. Apple Cider
2. Yeast 

Basically, all they did was buy a gallon jug of apple cider from the grocery store, put the yeast in, and let the cider ferment for a couple of weeks.  They made it twice.  The first time they used a champagne yeast.  The second time they used a package of Fermentis US 05, which is a pretty neutral dry ale yeast.  It sounds like they prefer the ale yeast because it doesn't finish quite as dry.

I was in the grocery store on Friday and saw some apple cider on the shelf.  I thought to myself, "Self, I have some Mr. Beer dry yeast that I will likely never use for beer.  Maybe I should make the hard cider that James and Steve made."  I agreed with myself and picked up a jug of spiced apple cider to bring home.

Then, later that night, I took a specific gravity reading (1.048), put in 3 packets of Mr. Beer under-the-cap yeast, let the yeast hydrate for a few minutes, shook up the cider, and covered the jug with aluminum foil.

Now, I'll let the yeast eat the cider sugars and produce alcohol.  In a couple weeks, I'll take another gravity reading and try the hard cider.  Pretty simple.  We'll see how it goes.  I've never made hard cider before.

If you are interesting in seeing the videos, they are:

• January 30, 2011 - Simple Cider
• February 26, 2011 - Apple Jack

Their YouTube channel is simply:  http://www.youtube.com/basicbrewing 

[Edit ... around 6:00 AM on Saturday]:  The cider is bubbling away.  Like James said, there is no krassen like beer, just a lot of little carbon dioxide bubbles rising to the surface.