We had some apples sitting around, so we decided to make a bit of hard cider. This didn’t quite work out as planned, since I guess we bottled it too early, which resulted in losing some of the batch when a 22 of cider exploded. We ended up only getting half as much as we started with.
Filled a 20qt stock pot with apples and steamed them for an hour or so. Then squeezed as much juice as possible from them and got about one gallon of it (combined with the water from steaming). This was put into a one gallon growler as a primary fermenter. Added 1 1/2lbs. of sugar to the liquid and 1 packet of baking yeast (maybe not recommended). Then the growler was capped with a stopper and airlock. This was done on 2/16/09.
On 2/24/09, racked to secondary growler, straining it through a muslin bag.
On 3/4/09, I thought it looked about done, so I bottled it. I guess I was wrong, because on 3/9/09 one of the bottles exploded. It just didn’t like being made to conform. Clearly, there had been too much fermentation going on (that and that the baking yeast isn’t as sensitive to pressure). So I uncapped all the bottles, resulting in instant foam-over for about 20 seconds, and threw the stuff back into a growler from 3/10 until 3/14, when I rebottled it, only getting a total of 6 12oz bottles now.