That's the heavy lifting for 2026 sorted. About 70 litres of cider and my first shot at perry, about 15 litres.

The beach hedge is sorted too, which is not nearly as much fun!

If so how much sediment are you getting. I don’t want to disgorge but well I don’t know how but I’m wondering how much is too much.

Hello all, I am making my very first batch of hard cider and decided to try natural carbonation. I made sure the cider went dry during the primary fermentation, and added a recommended amount of white sugar before bottling, as well as a tiny bit of extra yeast to make sure fermentation would occur in the bottles.

I have 7 new 16-ounce glass flip-top bottles (AYL brand off Amazon) filled with cider and being stored in a plastic bin in case of any bottle bombs. However, when I opened the bin to check a few days after bottling, there was a clear apple/alcohol smell in the bin. This indicates to me that at least one of the bottles has a leak, even though the bottles have hopefully new rubber seals and were advertised to be airtight to hold carbonation.

First, how can I confirm which bottles have a leak? I followed one recommendation to add sanitizer fluid to the rim of the seal to look for any bubbles, but I did not seem to see any. I can see some bubbles inside most of the bottles, so I think carbonation/fermentation is happening and CO2 is being produced.

Second, did I do anything wrong when closing/sealing the bottles? I saw that dried out or old rubber seals may not be airtight. The bottles were washed and then sanitized beforehand, so the rubber at least got somewhat wet during that. And again these were new bottles so hopefully they were not old seals that went bad. I also saw that if the seal was uneven, there may be a leak. They all look fairly straight, with maybe a couple degrees tilt, so that could be a possibility?

Thanks for the assistance!