Cider ferment stuck - fresh pressed juice

limetwist 2015-09-30 03:31:24 UTC #21

Is that what "cold crashing" is? (I swear there is new lingo since I hung out here last, I don't remember the gelatin either... I may have gotten senile ) I don't have an extra fridge, but do have a chest freezer just sitting. I wonder how high it could stay?

I'll put the primary in the basement tomorrow to drop a couple more degrees, my best wines have been fermented cool. I have no idea if that carries over lol. It's still 68 or so down there unfortunately.

rebuiltcellars 2015-09-30 07:10:34 UTC #22

limetwist:

dmtaylo2:

The shop's advice is actually all pretty reasonable. Just be patient with it now and it should turn out great. It will ferment very dry but you can try to ward this off by racking often (about once a week) and hitting with gelatin as soon as specific gravity hits 1.010. Then rack again and keep it ice cold. Carbonation is a crapshoot -- it is easier to just drink it flat.
Is that what "cold crashing" is? (I swear there is new lingo since I hung out here last, I don't remember the gelatin either... I may have gotten senile ) I don't have an extra fridge, but do have a chest freezer just sitting. I wonder how high it could stay?

I'll put the primary in the basement tomorrow to drop a couple more degrees, my best wines have been fermented cool. I have no idea if that carries over lol. It's still 68 or so down there unfortunately.

dmtaylo2 has developed his own way of doing cider, in particular how to get it to stop fermenting before all the sugar is converted and thus preserve some sweetness without resorting to stabilizing and then backsweetening. I haven't tried it, but that's because he always talks about how hit or miss it is, plus making slightly sweet carbonated cider is easy for me because I have the equipment for it (kegs). Much as I respect the work he's done, arresting fermentation that way would scare me, almost as much as the method my friend came up with to simply bottle the cider when it has dropped to 2-3 gravity points above where he wants it to end (using at least one plastic soda bottle), and then when carbonation makes the soda bottle hard, put the whole batch in the fridge and leave it there until you drink it. Works until something happens, the cider warms up and all the bottles explode.

If I was you, I'd play it safe on this one and settle for dry cider. Or you can test to see if an artificial sweetener works for you, because that will still allow you to add priming sugar for bottle carbonation.

porkchop 2015-09-30 13:24:09 UTC #23

Yup, I'm in da Yoop. I agree, the store's instructions were pretty reasonable for an off-dry cider. I don't see it stopping at 1.005-1.010 on its own, though. It'll be pretty dry, even with ale yeast. Also I would give it more time, as these things can ferment really slooooowly. SG being the same two days apart doesn't mean it's done, and dropping 10 gravity points is going to overcarbonate at best, create bottle bombs at worst. That part is not solid advice.

I like to make ciders similar to Rebuilt - more like a wine. Ferment dry, let it clear in secondary, and bottle. But since I don't have kegging equipment, I have to either carbonate dry cider (which is awesome in itself) or back-sweeten with non-fermentable sugars. Artificial sweeteners taste like crap to me, although some people seem to not mind stevia. I disagree, they all taste awful. But I was surprised when I tried xylitol - It by far has the most neutral flavor, when used in moderation. 1C dry in 3 gallons cider produces a nice moderately sweet cider, and can be primed and carbonated with regular sugar. Give it a try before putting it in your cider, though - it can give some people serious stomach cramps if they have too much.

limetwist 2015-09-30 19:15:54 UTC #24

SG today = 1.020 whew!
I didn't give it a taste yet. Any idea why it's turned yellow over the past week?

porkchop 2015-09-30 19:38:41 UTC #25

As in cloudy yellow? It should be suspended yeast causing the color to lighten and get murky. All good signs!

dmtaylo2 2015-09-30 19:38:56 UTC #26

Sounds good.

The yeast is eating all the brown stuff in the juice and then settling it out at the bottom. Your finished cider will certainly be yellow and not brown -- never seen a brown cider unless someone did something silly like adding brown sugar or molasses to it (please don't do that).

rebuiltcellars 2015-09-30 20:14:42 UTC #27

I tried adding molasses once, aiming for a traditional New England cider. Haven't done it since.

dmtaylo2 2015-09-30 20:20:20 UTC #28

Cider speaks to me (and I speak back to it). Cider says it wants to be alone and unadulterated by human creativity. Cider wants to express itself in its own way, and humans be damned if they mess it up by mixing it with sugars or spices or anything "nice". Cider doesn't need any help to be awesome all by itself.

Or something like that.

brew_cat 2015-09-30 21:48:44 UTC #29

Great news on saving your cider. Post back after you taste it, I'd like to hear.

limetwist 2015-09-30 23:50:26 UTC #30

Actually it went yellow while waiting for the 04 to kick in. The OG had stayed the same, but it turned yellow. Actually a pretty clear yellow when I racked it off the trub. Could the nutrient and attempted yeast have done this? It began as standard brown fresh pressed juice.

limetwist 2015-10-01 00:09:50 UTC #31

Sept 23 right before pitching 2nd pkt of 04

http://postimg.org/image/c2i0ok519/

porkchop 2015-10-01 03:14:23 UTC #32

I'll bet it was the Campden and turbidity from the yeast trying to get going. It turns brown from oxidation, but among other things, k-meta is a great anti-oxidant. Kind of like putting ascorbic acid on a cut apple. The yeast may have been slowly multiplying, which will make it cloudy and lighten the color even more.

rebuiltcellars 2015-10-01 06:54:54 UTC #33

Filtered apple juice is yellow and clear. Maybe enough of the particulates dropped out to do this. Perhaps the nutrient or energizer (or even the yeast cells) acted as a fining agent to clump some of those particles and pull them down to the bottom?

limetwist 2015-10-02 00:51:43 UTC #34

I racked today. Looks eerily like orange juice! Very cloudy still, but some scuz on the bottom left. Unfortunately it's down to 1.002 - maybe 1.000, couldn't quite tell. It tastes like dry wine, not appley at all, so I'm disappointed right now. i really thought not adding sugar would force it to retain the apple flavor. I tried some with bit of sugar, but that didn't help either. Hubs is not going to be happy, so I didn't save any for him to taste lol. I told him I didn't think all the apple ciders and ales we've had were carbonated, because I don't think they were. Point has one they sell to places to have on tap - it's good, strong, apply and I don't think it's carbonated, or at least not carbonated like, say, Woodchuck. This is definitely wine, though. I'm a little miffed, because the ABV wouldn't even be 6%, so I'm not understanding the dry, harsh taste. I'm used to that when I'd make wine with an 18% ABV!

I should top this off, I'm not up to the neck of my carboy. Some grocery store stuff with no preservatives?

dmtaylo2 2015-10-02 11:19:59 UTC #35

You are experiencing real cider. Point and Woodchuck are crap ciders made from concentrate. The real beverage, like yours, is dry and wine-like, even at just ~6% ABV. There are different paths you can take at this point.

A) The conventional way is either to ferment to dryness (0.992-0.994) then backsweeten with additions of sorbate and sulfite to hope to prevent exploding bottles from refermentation.

B) You could also slam with sorbate and sulfite right now to hopefully keep the final gravity closer to like 1.000, then backsweeten again later same as above.

C) You could add gelatin and keep the cider ice cold for a couple of months as I do to remove almost all the yeast and hope to halt fermentation further. If you wanted you could even add the sorbate and sulfite on top of it to really make sure. It tends to mellow out in the refrigerator. Then the yeast is so tired at the end of that that refermentation in the bottles is very unlikely even without chemical additions.

D) Let it ferment out, don't backsweeten, and treat it as though you've made a "lite" white wine! That's really what real cider is.

If you want to make Point or Woodchuck, it's not really possible although you can get close with option C above if you ferment cold around 50 F for a very long time and rack once per week, adding gelatin and crash cooling just as soon as gravity hits about 1.010 (maybe even 1.015). That's for the future -- it's too late for this batch. Next time.

rebuiltcellars 2015-10-02 12:07:11 UTC #36

Actually, it is. All you need to do is stabilize with sulfite and sorbate, then back sweeten with apple juice concentrate and artificially carbonate in a keg. What you end up with won't reflect the terroir of the orchard you picked your fruit from, but it will end up closer to what many people prefer when they think of cider these days. Which makes sense, as I suspect many commercial ciders are made exactly that way.

dmtaylo2 2015-10-02 12:35:23 UTC #37

Okay, you must be right, it must be possible. However it does require a very specific process as you provided, and would most likely require a bit of practice to get it right. I yield!

porkchop 2015-10-02 13:10:23 UTC #38

Only other thing I'd like to add, is not to judge it at this point. It's only been going for a few days, and it's going to be yeasty and full of fermentation by-products. Let it finish dry and rack off the lees, then let it sit some more to clarify. It will absolutely mellow if you let it rest in the carboy for awhile. It sounds like you make wine, so this should be familiar.

Around the 6-month mark, if you can wait that long, the apple flavor really starts to come back. Probably from tannins falling out and by-products being slowly metabolized. But there's a remarkable difference if you can wait.

And a little bit of non-fermentable sugar goes a long way. Once it's clear, it can be bottled with a non-fermentable sugar for sweetness, regular priming sugar for carbonation, and a cheap dry yeast in case your primary yeast has kicked the bucket.

limetwist 2015-10-02 19:31:23 UTC #39

Thanks. I don't really mind if it's still, I just really wanted it to really taste like apple. Like the fresh juice only at 4-5-6% abv.

I stopped with wine because I was giving so much away to people who liked dry white wine. Or I'd make spritzers from them. I'm obviously not a connoisseur :mrgreen:

I'll be patient . I was reading my notes and some of the best ones finished at .992, were dry and busting with flavor. Fresh grape, raspberry, and most all that I made from concentrate (best being pomegranate-cherry). I've had to dump all the apple I've tried, and given away most pear related stuff.

The brew store guy got us pretty stoked with the idea that by not adding sugar, this would taste nothing like wine. - and carbonating was like icing on the cake. And in a month we could start drinking it. I guess if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is :mrgreen: (have I learned nothing in 4+ decades? LOL

It's not even close to being clear, but it was 3 days LOL. I think I've been reading too much about people supposedly drinking this out of the primary with a tin cup after a week :mrgreen:

limetwist 2015-10-02 19:36:29 UTC #40

Oh, I'm guessing it's still best to top off the carboy. Just grocery store juice? The original is almost gone and is unpasteurized. Thanks, guys, all of you, and have a super weekend!