Bottling Day and First Samples

Spent several hours this past Saturday bottling the Cherry Wheat Ale, Welch's Wine, and Hard Cider. We did the beer in the typical manner with corn sugar for carbonation. The Welch's Wine and Hard Cider we split between part carbonated and part still. Carbonation was done with Muntons Carb Tabs and all of the still was prepped with the addition of Potassium Sorbate. We also experimented with bottling some of the wine in growlers to save on bottles (still, as growlers are supposedly not suitable for carbonation).

I decided to pull a couple of bottles over the past few days to sample. I started with a bottle each of the cider and wine on Tuesday. It had only been 3 days since bottling, but because they are still, I wasn't waiting for carbonation to happen (really just aging and clarification).

Hard Cider: Very clear, looks very nice, tastes extremely dry. Slight sulphur taste & odor that could be off-putting to some people. That may have been addressable by allowing the cider to "breathe" longer after adding the crushed campden tablet, but I'm not exactly sure. Overall, it's drinkable. I'm thinking the next time I make a cider I'll use a heat pasteurization method and include some maltose for a bit of sweetness.

Welch's Wine: Not quite clear. You can tell that granulated sugar was used as a large part of the fermentables from the trademark "cidery" taste. Clarity will likely improve with aging, but the cidery taste probably isn't going away. Grape flavor is minimal. If I did this again, I would probably go for more of the grape concentrate and switch to corn sugar (not sure why I didn't use that initially).

I tried one of the bottles of the Cherry Wheat Ale last night, 4 days after bottling:

Cherry Wheat Ale: Mild haze. Good taste, but ends with an "extract twang". Cherry flavor would be hard to identify if I didn't know what it was. Carbonation was minimal, but expected after only 4 days. I expect this one to improve over the next couple of weeks.

I've been reading up on "extract twang" since last night, and most people seem to agree it has to do with the use of old extract or particular extract brands. What everyone appears to be all over the board on is how to avoid it. I've read about:

• Full boil
• Late malt extract addition (last 20 - 10 minutes of boil)
  
• Use of dry malt extract exclusively
• Use of "fresh" or "higher quality" liquid malt extracts from reputable manufacturers
• Use of LME in plastic bottles or jars, not metal cans
  
• Addition of yeast nutrient

I'm going to try some of these in my next batch, although probably not the full boil method since my kettle isn't big enough. The batch I just started last weekend used 9.9 lbs of LME, but the recipe called for 3.3 lbs at the start and 6.6 lbs at the end. It's also from Norther Brewer, who distributes in plastic "milk jugs" and moves a lot of product every week - both of which are supposed to contribute to freshness. We'll see. I can drink beers with this "extract twang" but I'd rather not have to if I can avoid it.