Got an interesting project going at the moment...
It's been pretty difficult to get hold of some Calvados round here, as only the big stores seem to stock it, and the off-licences are in the town and not close by, so we bit the bullet on a whim, and I went to the Maidstone Wine Making Centre in Hardy Street(recommended), and bought a kit to make 30 bottles of vodka...
The plan is to make it with apple juice, and so far, it's romping away, which is not surprising, as the yeast packet weighed several ounces, and the nutrient package was nearly half a pound, so we should really expect some action!
For the record, I used 18 litres of apple juice, with an O.G. of around 1.045, and boiled up 5 kg of sugar to add to it.
The recommended amount of sugar for 23 litres is 7.8 kg, and I had to search the net to get an idea of what the apple would provide in the way of O.G., before the calculation came out at the figure above.
The total mix has (had) an O.G. of 1.056, which actually seems a bit low, as they expect the resulting brew to have an alcohol content of 21%!
Admittedly, I have over-stretched the total quantity by a litre, although we were very strict on the amount of water we used to dissolve all that sugar, so the 'bulk', of the sugar is probably why that happened, or the litre cartons of apple juice were slightly over in each case.
Has anyone any views on how the O.G. will attain the alcohol content at all? I'm slightly mystified, and probably not seeing the obvious! It is supposed to get down to total dryness at between 0.980 - .990, in three weeks.