Secondary, 1st batch

Sunday, November 28th, I decided that my first batch of cider, now nicknamed the Yeastie Beastie, was ready to be transfered to a secondary for some aging.  I had read dozens of opinions on when to transfer to the secondary.  Many said to wait until airlock activity had been reduced to once every 5 minutes or so, while others simply transfered after two weeks regardless of activity.  Also many never transfer to a secondary, for different reasons.  Some never transfer to reduce the risk of contamination, exposure to air, and some simply don't do it because it's easier and one less step.  On the other end of the spectrum, many people are very opinionated about why it's essential to transfer and to get the product off of the yeast sediment.  I obviously decided TO transfer, so that's what you'll see below.  My airlock activity was about once every 35-45 seconds and the batch had been in the primary for 19 days.

Many use large food grade buckets or brewing specific bottles for their secondary.  I looked into purchasing a 3 gallon bottle for this, but was advised against buying a 3 gallon bottle unless I plan on continuing to do 3 gallon batches.  Originally I had planned on doing 5 Gallons but because of fear of making a large volume of undrinkable crap, I chickened out and only made 3 gallons.  Since I will be doing 5 gallon batches in the future, I opted on using the original 1 gallon glass jars I already had (the jugs the juice came in), and buying a rubber stopper and airlock for each.  This will allow me to do small test batches in the future if I want to work on perfecting a recipe.  The Primary can have extra air space, because of all the fermentation, the air will be dissipated, however with the secondary, you need to ensure that you have minimal air space in the container.  I added some fresh juice to alleviate this as you'll see.

Onto the Transfer!

As always, Cleanliness is the MOST  IMPORTANT thing to consider.  Using the B-Brite Sanitizer, I sanitized the glass jugs (previously I had removed the labels by letting the jugs soak in my bathtub for a half hour and lightly scrubbing with a brush to get all of the adhesive off), the stoppers, and the airlocks and then placed them on a sanitized surface.

After everything was sanitized, I moved everything over to my makeshift station (aka living room table....) to start the process.

You can see the jug of fresh juice ready to add.

I then decided to take a Gravity Reading to see where it's at.  On 11/19 I did a reading and it was 1.031.  I was hoping for something around 1.01 but was pleasantly surprised to find that it was 1.000!  Meaning it was a lot further along than I had expected.  On the forum I frequent, www.homebrewtalk.com, meaning people using the same juice and sugar ratio fermented out to a gravity reading of .990 or lower.  The aroma was very yeasty, almost like a fresh loaf of bread, still had vodka-like vapors that were somewhat overpowering, and still cloudy, though I'm assuming after letting it age off of the yeast, it will clear up a bit.

So now that I had taken the gravity, and had a glass ready to accept the sample :) I was ready to transfer the cider from the primary to the secondaries.  I purchased a Brew Bucket WITH a Spigot to make this process extremely easy.  I'm glad I did, because this was so simple, and for only a few bucks more, you'd be silly not to.  I simply placed a Jug underneath the spigot and turned it open and let the cider pour.  I spaced it out equally between the 3 gallons to ensure that I'd be adding the same amount of fresh juice to each jug.

After adding the fresh juice to about 1 1/2 inches left of air space, I assembled the airlocks into the stoppers and put in filtered water in the airlocks (many people use cheap vodka in the airlocks to ensure that there's no bacteria growth.  I may do this in the future.).

That's it, Transfer to the secondary complete.  Now, to taste:

Still has some aging to do, but it's coming along very nicely!

Now It's time to clean the primary........I wasn't too sure about what to expect.  I've heard the terminology 'yeast cake' for what's in the bottom of the fermenter and was a little scared to see it.  It wasn't bat at all and rinsed out without any problem.  I then proceeded to clean the primary bucket and sanitize it.

Happy Brewing!