Hey everyone. I’m going to pick up 3 gallons of fresh pressed cider. Between the two methods of heat and camden tabs do any seasoned cider makers have a preference on stabilizing the must before fermentation. any random tricks/helful info? I’ve been all grain brewing for a few years but this will be my first go at anything besides beer
I’m working my first cider now and I used Camden before I pitched my yeast. I was also wondering the same thing. I also thought why not pitch the yeast with the wild and then use the Camden on the back end. I’m not afraid of wild yeast just maybe some other nasties that would sour the cider
Check out this thread, which covers that topic quite thoroughly: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=126094
FYI, I did not follow the advice in that thread, and I regret it.
I was following that thread. Now the last post about a lager yeast was interesting, that might keep the wild stuff at bay. I mean fermenting at 50 deg
[quote=“kcbeersnob”]Check out this thread, which covers that topic quite thoroughly: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=126094
FYI, I did not follow the advice in that thread, and I regret it.[/quote]
Why do you regret it? What’s happened? Details (here or there or in a PM)?
[quote=“dmtaylo2”][quote=“kcbeersnob”]Check out this thread, which covers that topic quite thoroughly: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=126094
FYI, I did not follow the advice in that thread, and I regret it.[/quote]
Why do you regret it? What’s happened? Details (here or there or in a PM)?[/quote]
The cider turned out terrible. Hot and a lot of sulfur–even 3 weeks after pitching.
After seeing conditions inside the cider mill, I opted to use campden and pitch 24 hours later. Fermentation was sluggish. After a week, it was only at 1.008. When I checked at the two week mark, it was down to 1.000.
I’m leaving it alone for a while in hope that it will clean up.
Sulfur is pretty normal for any cider. “They” say that yeast nutrients can be beneficial for minimizing sulfur. I haven’t noticed much difference so I don’t use nutrients anymore, but you can try it if you like. In the end, sulfur always goes away with age. It’s just a matter of how long it takes – maybe a few weeks, maybe several months. But eventually the sulfur is gone.
I have a 2-year old cider that is still a sulfur bomb, campden + nottingham. It’s decidedly not going away, and about the only thing the cider is good for is cooking strongly flavored foods. This is the reason I’m anti-campden prior to fermentation.
Wow, that’s a bummer. I guess maybe it did happen to me once, but that was when I experimented with adding Brett after primary fermentation. Brett made the cider much worse, IMHO. The Spaniards might not agree, but man, their funky sidra style tastes horrible to me.
I used US-04, which as I recall a couple people saying they didn’t like in cider. I’ve had great cider made with US-04, but campden was not used. I’m thinking that strain might be particularly sensitive to campden.
I’ve never used US-04, but a friend told me it produces copious amounts of sulfur even in beer.
Thinking about racking from bucket to carboy for aging in hope that the surfer and heat die down.
I haven’t tried it (yet), but I understand that attaching a short piece of copper tubing to the end of your racking hose can work wonders to precipitate out the sulfur. I would have tried it with my previous cider had it not already been in bottles when I heard of this trick.
Maybe question one should have been is a fully fermented bottle carbonated cider worth drinking? I like tart beers like gose. I was thinking of using Scottish ale yeast to maybe leave a little something left. In a zymurgy article awhile back on cider Scottish ale was ranked number one by judges and I happen to have a pumpkin beer fermenting with 1728
The sugars in cider are fully fermentable by beer yeast, so even a yeast with low attenuation in beer should fully ferment cider. You would have to take specific action to stop fermentation, such as using additives (sulfite and sorbate) or pasteurization. In the thread referenced above, Dave talks about a multi-step racking procedure that he uses to essentially halt fermentation.
The other option (which I think is most common) is to let it ferment out fully, add sulfite & sorbate (or pasteurize) and then backsweeten.
Interesting that you should mention this… I did in fact try 1728 for one batch last year. While it was the sweetest cider I have made, it didn’t have the very best flavor in my opinion. It tasted just fine, nothing wrong with it, but not awesome like I’d expected either. I’ll probably try it again in the future, but didn’t this year. My favorites are US-05 and Cote des Blancs with respect to flavor, so that’s what I’ve used for 3 of my 4 batches this year (the other is wild yeast). Unfortunately both of these yeast strains ferment very dry unless you force them to quit early and/or kill them. Dry ciders can be very good, but tend to be very tart as well. I like to maintain some sweetness to help balance the tartness. I’ve also been seeking apples that are very sweet and bland without much tartness to use as a base for my cider. These varieties are unfortunately not so easy to find but could come in handy. Maybe I should turn to Red Delicious for this purpose??? As long as they are blended with apples that actually taste like something(!), it could turn out not quite so tart. Never tried it yet, and not this year. Maybe in another year or two I will.
Go ahead and try the 1728. I think you will like it. But also play around with other yeasts, and find the ones you like.
:cheers:
This sounds good in theory, but in practice, some yeasts actually do quit a little early, fortunately. Maybe not much higher than like 1.000, but still better than 0.992.
If I try US-04 again, I’m waiting 4 or 5 days after any campden I add. I pitched at 24 hours, nothing. 2 more days I pitched another, nothing… the guys here helped me out and I pitched Cote des Blanc wine yeast and it took off. I just wonder how much all that messing around affected the flavor.
Best of luck in your adventure!
This works, it is a standard wine making trick; people have been using it for centuries to reduce sulfur from fermentation.
To be clear, the sulfur smell and taste you can get comes from the yeast working in adverse conditions, not from the sulfite. Depending on the yeast strain, it is possible that the addition of sulfites pre-fermentation can cause the yeast trouble and result in sulfur production. For that reason, if you add sulfite pre-fermentation, you really should use a cultured yeast that is sulfite resistant. Which means wine yeasts.
Stepping back a bit, the whole purpose of adding sulfite or heat treating the juice is to knock down any wild yeast or other microbes present from the apples so that the cultured yeast can out-compete them. That means that if your juice comes from clean apples (not drops) and you pitch a big quantity of yeast very quickly after the press, you likely don’t need to do anything else.
