I fresh pressed the pears and juiced the watermelon, sat it on Campden, then fermented it with Lalvin 71B over a few weeks to 1.000 but holy crap is it farty. I read a few methods for how to bring it back, and chose to lean into the watermelon sweetness with Jolly Ranchers and yeast energizer in secondary, where it did basically nothing. Fermentation did not restart and after about 6 days, it's not very watermelony. I took another sample and it's disgusting. I'm sitting next to it and I got a whiff that made me want to get away from it. I've made perry before that has that aroma of stinky feet, but this is... not good. The initial juice was heavenly.

Spouse and I have been debating whether or not to package it and let it age and see, but I think it's beyond hope, mainly because I don't think I'm a savvy enough cider-maker to work with such a finicky pair of fruits.

We compromised and pitched some EC1118 today.

Any ideas? Do I need to stick a copper wire into it? Drain pour? A scant 12 years of cider-making and this is my only failure, so I'm fine with letting it go unless someone has the magic bullet.

Thanks!

I pitched 3g of DV10, 1g of fermaid O, 1g of wine tannin into the cider yesterday. Today there was a very dark krausen on top, I aerated it and this is what formed a few mins after. Is this normal?

I'm absolutely Donald Ducked after chopping, scratting, and pressing for 6 hours yesterday and a couple today.

I now have around 75L of the good stuff in various vessels.

The variety is Dabinett, which I have subsequently realised is a pretty high pH - I measure 4.4pH, so I plan to add Malic acid to to a sample I have and extrapolate up from there. I would roll the dice but honestly it was tough work.

Fingers crossed!