Aging cider question

Is it better to bulk age your cider or just go straight to bottles or does it make a difference? Does it make any difference if it’s still or carbonated? Does it age faster/better at higher temperatures?

To be simple, I have a couple of wine bottles of apple ale from 4 years ago still waiting, and I do open one from time to time and find they are still good to enjoy. They are still. Now, I do keg and and carb a 5-er of apple ale and don’t let too many peeps know, and I can enjoy them for almost a year! Sneezles61

I bottle after three or four weeks.
I still have some from last summer’s batch in a Tap-A-Draft that is still very good.

Thanks. I just bottled one with Equal using White Labs cider yeast and I have one to bottle that I’m not going to artificially sweeten that I used Mangrove Jack’s yeast on. We’ll see how they turn out.

I’m going to do one more with EC-1118 and some sugar and mulling spices for the holidays. A winter warmer, as it were.

Mmmmm, inexpensive appley goodness…

As with most of my beers and meads, I bulk age my cider to make sure all fermentation is completely finished and fermented dry, since I like traditional cider and I don’t like any carbonation at all in my ciders or meads (hence, the long bulk aging, which eliminates the chance of carbonation once bottled). I bulk age my meads for an average of one full year before bottling, and typically wait an average of another three to five years before opening any of the bottles. (I actually still have a few bottles from the late '80s/early '90s, when I was still able to buy local honey from a local beekeeper for $1.25/lb and hence, able to make LOTS of mead). Whenever I open one of those old bottles, I wind up kicking myself for not having made a LOT more of the stuff back then, when I was still able to buy local honey in bulk for around $1.25/lb. :disappointed:

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I’m not sure to envy you or say, geez, all that good stuff to enjoy with others! I have come to understand a few things about this hobby of fermenting sugars of any source, MOST take time to come of age. I think Brew Cat had a phrase borrowed from Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part! Sneezles61

True! This summer, I bought a sixer of a beer that was kind of a mess (Lagunitas Waldos ale). Homebrew intuition kicked in, and I threw it in the cellar to mellow out. Even rough IPAS can turn into decent pales or Amber’s if you age them out.

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