Other advantage of wine corks over caps for still cider that needs to be mentioned, once you rack up a couple hundred bottles of cider or wine in your basement, you can store them on their sides which can take up a lot less space than trying to stand them all upright. Storing a capped bottle on its side will end up with the cap rusting. This is a big advantage of corks to me.
I don’t have champagne bottles hoarded 
Ok, so I have half a plan. I’m going to rack to 2 4-liter glass carboys and keep them cool and let them age for natural cider.
For the rest - about 2-1/2 gallons-
It’s already drier than I intended, but if I add concentrate now, the yeast should pick up again, right? I did rack it once, into a carboy, but there’s still a lot of lees in the bottom. I’ll rack again to split the batch. I’m then only focusing on the sweetened portion now:
If I put apple juice concentrate in, (maybe to SG 1.020 or 1.015?), let it ferment down a bit, then bottle, I should get carbonation from that, right?
When does the situation call for priming sugar? I don’t want to go too crazy adding more sugar and risk bombs or geysers. I never want to deal with the non-stop foaming crazy science project scenes that have happened in my past :mrgreen:
If it begins to re-ferment with the concentrate, I wait till taste is good - check the SG to make sure it’s around 1.010 or less - and then bottle quick, check often, and do the hot water pasteurization as mentioned earlier in the thread.
I guess I’ll know if it doesn’t start re-fermenting that I’ll have to do something different, but it’s only been a week+ , on wine yeast - so I think it should be ok. (otherwise I have no clue how/when to add yeast specifically for priming, and hubs doesn’t remember from his beer kits.
This sounds pretty half-arse as I reread it, but am I on the right track? If the yeast takes off after the concentrate is added, is it ok to bottle, then heat pasteurize? Or do I have to wait till SG settles down? (and then the priming sugar question).
Thanks a million!
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My tomato juice canning will be finished tomorrow, and I’ll climb up to the attic and start lowering down my stash of 12 oz bottles 8)
Sorry about writing the next War and Peace novel… It’s late. :roll:
Yep, that’s the idea! I think you’re on the right track.
Priming sugar is only if you let it finish dry, with all the sugars fermented out of it. You need to add a small amount of sugar back into it for the yeast to produce carbon dioxide in the bottles.
But the way you’re doing it, you’ll have plenty of sugars to carbonate the bottles from the concentrate. Just make sure after it’s bottled to catch it at the right time to pasteurize, so they don’t overcarbonate or explode. The plastic soda bottle, as mentioned previously, is a great way to gauge it. Kill the yeast once they’re at the right carb level, which will lock in the sweetness level.
Wear safety glasses when you do it, though - I’ve heard of bottles shattering if the carbonation is too high.
I’ll try to provide answers in an equally disjointed manner
Start with the yeast. It WILL take off again. It takes at least a year of starving wine yeast before you can be sure they are dead. That’s why champagne is cellar aged at least 15 months before they disgorge and add a dosage to sweeten.
The only purpose of priming sugar is to provide just enough food to the yeast so that they will generate the proper amount of CO2 for carbonation, and not more. As you will be adding juice concentrate, there is no need to use priming sugar.
Your plan is to arrest fermentation via pasteurization once you reach the correct carbonation, so there is no reason to wait till the cider tastes right before bottling. Instead, add exactly enough concentrate that it tastes right immediately (add a little at a time till you get there), and then stir well and bottle immediately. Make sure one of the bottles is a plastic soda bottle. When the soda bottle becomes hard so you know the carbonation is correct, use your hot water bath pasteurization (and hope it works).
The pasteurization is the only part of this plan I’d be nervous about. You might want to store the bottles in a heavy plastic tote or something similar that will contain exploding bottles and spilled cider in case it doesn’t work.
I’d be nervous about the pasteurization part, too. However, some people swear by it, so with proper precautions it’s got to work reasonably well. You can pasteurize wort or canned pickled foods at 180F, so why not cider?
I have not tried this, but I understand that you can also use a sanitize cycle on your dishwasher to pasteurize bottles. Buyer beware, I have not done this, but with due care I can see it working.
There’s a sticky thread at HBT forum (cider section) on the heat pasteurization. It’s long and I haven’t read it all yet, but I will. I don’t think the dishwasher can hold the temp high enough to get the right temperature to the center of the bottles, which makes sense.
I’ll read more over lunch, then water can my tomato juice (bloody marys anyone?), then head to the store for the best apple concentrate I can find. I’m thinking I should maybe rack into the big brew bucket overnight, or at least another carboy to keep from stirring up the lees before I sweeten and bottle. The bucket I guess, so I can stir.
Will there still be enough yeast in suspension on the top of the current carboy after a week? I’m thinking “yes” but it doesn’t hurt to ask 
And to “sparkle” - better to stop it a bit early than a bit late —
Thank you again, your awesomenesses!
I don’t worry about yeast viability until it’s been sitting for at least 6 months. :cheers:
Ok… I think I have my plan
Sweet & Sparkly - 3 gallons - concentrate bought. Will begin soon - rack to brew bucket, sweeten to taste, fill bottles, and watch OFTEN for carbonation, then heat pasturize.
Aged wine - rack into 1 gallon carboy with airlock and leave for 3-6 months.
Dry & Sparkly - rack to 1 gallon carboy.
Question: Do I bottle this right away, or wait a couple months, then add corn sugar (1 oz?) and bottle?
Dry and sparkly, I’d rack it and wait until it’s clear before bottling. 1-oz corn sugar should be nice and spritzy, what kind of bottles are you going to use? I’d use an online priming calculator and keep it under say 3.0 volumes if you’re using standard beer bottles.
Yes, I have regular pry-off cap beer bottles. What type of beer do you compare to get the right CO2 volume? I see at 2.5 it’s 1 oz. I feel dumb because I’ve only done the pre-packaged beer kits so far, so I just follow the instructions :oops:
I’m excited! I’ll risk my life climbing up to my weird attic on a ladder and lower the bottles down today and start prepping them. Tomorrow I’m staying in the hospital with my parents while my dad has some surgery done. So thursday or friday if all goes well.
Thanks, porkchop, for getting back to me so quick about the priming
2.5 volumes is a good starting point. That’s about the carb level for an American IPA, for comparison. I like upwards of 2.7-3.5 volumes, the higher you go the more “prickly” it feels on the tongue, and it frees more of the aromatics in the cider. The increased carbonic acid can also brighten it somewhat. But it’s all personal preference, and based on the limitations of the bottle. Maybe try it at 2.5 volumes, and next time you can adjust upwards or downwards. If you go over 3 or so volumes of CO2, you’re going to want to go to a heavier bottle.
Or save those champagne bottles and carb it to 5 volumes if you really want it to get exciting!
A good deal of the flavor that people associate with good champagne (not the cheap stuff) is caused by the slow breakdown of the yeast in the bottle. So yes, cider can get that flavor, you just have to age it in the bottle for several years. Look up “method champagne” or “method traditional” for making sparkling wines. I’ve done the same thing with cider. It comes out great, but is a long process and a lot of work.
Update: 32 bottles of sweetened apple wine/cider back from .994 or .996 (had trouble getting a reading with my new wine thief :mrgreen:
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Update
When my plastic bottle filled out I began sampling capped bottles. My kitchen temp was cool, it took 10 days to carb where I wanted it. I still may have stopped a bit early, but didn’t want to take a chance. I pre-warmed all the bottles in a tote with hot tap water. Then I heat pasteurized 7 bottles at a time in my stock pot - 190* water, off the burner, bottles in, washcloth on the bottom of the pot to keep the bottles off the bottom, lid on, 10 minutes. I did wear safety glasses . Removed with tongs and oven mitt, placed on a towel on the counter to cool. The water temp after 10 minutes with the bottles in was about 160* each time. I put a bath towel over them for the next couple days, now they’re in a sealed tote bin - just in case - but I didn’t have any caps blow or bottles break. So hopefully that worked.
The other two projects are airlocked in the basement.
Sounds like it worked ! Well done. :cheers:
The Granny Smith sourish sweet flavor is kind of description of the flavor of the cider I made ( my first). I lost track of your process, but is that one that you back sweetened. Mine I just keged at .002. I don’t think I would trust putting it in bottles but I just pull a jug off the keg when needed. It is tasty.
Yes, I put 2 tubes of concentrate into the 3 gallons that had gone to about .994. I forgot to take a gravity measurement after sweetening though. I think I’d have added a bit more if I’d have had another tube. I’m still a bit nervous not knowing for sure that I killed all the yeast, but I followed the instructions with no incidents. Got a lot done in the kitchen during the process, too. My flat top stove was slow on reheating the water back to 190 after each batch, but not much I can do about that.
I don’t think they will sit around for long I’ll have to snap a pic of the finished product. Thanks a million to all of you for your help.
:cheers:
I’ve only made one cider and I used Lavlin D-47, to prevent drying out either rack early or sweeten it up. Wine yeast will reach 15-20% abv so you’ll want to stop short anyway.
