Do not bottle until airlock activity is totally zero for at least a week or two… unless you like dangerous explosions.
Dave,
So if I let it sit until no bubbles, does that mean all the sugar is gone?
I will rack it and see where it sits and let you know. I don’t want the bottle bombs, so I understand why we want it to stop bubbling. Even after it stops will it work if sugar is reintroduced to carbonate the bottles?
Thanks for the information.
Bryan
Sorry to jump in here late, but I would suggest you take a sample of the cider, measure the specific gravity and take a taste to see how sweet it is. It won’t taste great at this point, because it is still full of yeast and other suspended particulates, but it will tell you if you are at the sweetness you want.
I actually don’t think there is a bottle bomb problem if you follow your plan and are very careful about it. You actually don’t even need to add priming sugar if the sweetness is on target. The amount of sugar consumed to get proper carbonation is quite low.
But, be sure to monitor that plastic soda bottle well, and do your pasteurization IMMEDIATELY when you get to the level you want. And make sure you leave the bottles in the hot water long enough to ensure you kill the yeast, otherwise you WILL have bottle bombs.
Full-disclosure: I would not do cider this way. The pasteurization will cook the flavors (unless it is flash pasteurized, but you can’t do that after bottling) and the rapid processing will leave a lot of sediment in the bottles. If all that sediment was yeast, it would compact fairly tightly at the bottom of the bottles and you’d be able to pour off it, but it is not. So it will often get stirred up as you pour and will give you cloudy cider.
Or maybe not - I haven’t actually tried to do it that way so maybe I’m wrong. Tell us how it turns out.
[quote=“whtbearfan”]Dave,
So if I let it sit until no bubbles, does that mean all the sugar is gone?
I will rack it and see where it sits and let you know. I don’t want the bottle bombs, so I understand why we want it to stop bubbling. Even after it stops will it work if sugar is reintroduced to carbonate the bottles?
Thanks for the information.
Bryan[/quote]
Airlock activity is not the best way to monitor completion of fermentation. Lids and corks and gaskets can leak. Fermentation can still be happening with no airlock activity. Best way to know if fermentation is still occurring, with ciders, is to check specific gravity, wait about 10 days, then check gravity again. If the gravity changes by even just one or two points, fermentation is still happening. If you wait until no airlock bubbles, the sugar isn’t necessarily all gone. Also…
Just because fermentation is complete, doesn’t mean there is no sweetness left, either. If you rack often enough and/or use gelatin and/or sorbate or sulfite, you can end fermentation early and leave some residual sweetness.
The way I make my ciders is kind of unique but they do have sweetness at the end in a natural manner. I rack the cider every 7-10 days for the first month or two, and if it begins to taste too dry or too tart, I knock out the yeast with gelatin, wait a day or two, then rack it again. This removes about 90% of the yeast. The yeast that remains will become very tired and might quit early, without pasteurization or chemical additions. Then, if specific gravity stabilizes for a few weeks, I know it is safe to bottle. If I add priming sugar, occasionally I can get carbonation although usually not. If I do get carbonation, it often takes many months to fully carbonate. But often the cider is gone before that happens (gulp gulp gulp).
Carbonation with ciders is always a bit of a crapshoot in my experience. I have tried many different ways but for various reasons they all suck / none are reliable. Like rebuiltcellars says, if you try pasteurization, it might work, but can result in cooked flavors and result in a permanently cloudy cider – I have done this and was not happy with the results. The best way to carbonate a cider would be to keg it and force carbonate. That’s something that I myself have not yet dabbled with, but I know it would work very consistently. But if you want to bottle… good luck, that’s all I can say. Inevitably, you’ll either get an overcarbonated gusher, or you’ll get a dead still cider. Rarely you’ll get something in between that is well carbonated. I have done it once or twice, but I’m sure it was luck and not skill.
So… good luck!
The only reliable way to get non-dry, carbonated cider is to get rid of all the yeast by some method (chemically with sulfites and sorbate, sterile filtering, or flash pasteurization), and then sweeten to taste and artificially carbonate it from a tank. Or go the champagne route, but that takes over a year. I’ve done both, and artificially carbing from a keg is by far the easiest and has the shortest learning curve. But you do need to have the proper equipment.
I’ve had good luck fermenting cider dry and back-sweetening with xylitol. I’m pretty sensitive to the flavor of artificial sweeteners, but I haven’t been able to detect any flavors from the xylitol. It’s pretty neutral.
1 cup xylitol in 3-gallons dry cider adds back a decent amount of sweetness. My procedure is to ferment and age until crystal clear, back-sweeten, prime with corn sugar to desired carbonation level, re-yeast if aged a long time, and bottle as normal. About one month later, you should have sweet, nicely carbonated cider.
Xylitol… I might have to give that a try. In the past I have used sucralose (Splenda) and while I was able to get the right level of sweetness, it did have that nasty chemical taste to it. Xylitol is different. Might be worth a shot. Maybe stevia, too. I am very sensitive to artificial sweeteners and generally dislike them, but with so many different options these days, anything’s possible, and might taste just fine to others. Not a bad idea, maybe. However I’d avoid sucralose, I know I didn’t like that one.
Dave, be warned that it can have some side-effects on certain people’s digestive systems! You might want to try it out ahead of time before you risk your cider with it! :mrgreen:
Well yeah, that thought had occurred to me… might not want to drink more than one at a time!
I know you can get Stevia in the Raw now. The more I think about it maybe the keg carbonation is the way to go. But can you bottle from a keg? Kinda hard to lug around a keg system. If anyone ever said this isn’t science they were wrong. In the morning will be two weeks. My plan is to rack it tonight take a reading, taste and let everyone know where it sits. The bubbles are still slowing down. The cider is clear enough that I was able to look at the bottom of the surface. With the light shining through could see plenty of small bubbles racing to the top. Still active, but nothing like the first week.
Xylitol. I’ve read where this is lethal for dogs if they should happen to consume it. As bad as eating hops. Can’t imagine how they could ever get into the stuff but dogs (if they’re like mine) will eat anything. Just a heads up…
Still have’t had a chance to rack the cider. One thing that occurred to me looking at the carboy. I have 6 gallons in a 6.5 carboy. When I rack it, that is going to lower the level another 1/4 to 1/2 gallon. Do I need to add more juice to bring the level back up to 6 or even more to almost fill the carboy? Let me know.
Thanks
Bryan
p.s. Noticed an article today about a dog eating icebreaker mints or gum that had xylitol in it. Dog died from it.
I wouldn’t worry about the level in the carboy. It will be fine.
Well it has been three weeks and a day. The bubble comes about every 45 seconds now. I finally had a chance to rack it. The temp of the cider was 65 and then I took the hydrometer reading. Wow in that three weeks that English Cider yeast burned through the natural sugar and the 2 pounds of Turbinado sugar I put in. so from 1.053/4 it dropped to 0.998. It has a little apple taste and strong. It currently sits between 7.2 and 7.4% ABV.
Dave as you said I should have racked it sooner to try and keep some of the sweetness. It is bubbling a little more after racking, but assume it will calm down again.
If I let it go to no bubbles will it continue to get dryer and dryer?
Any other suggestion on what to do now?
Thanks
Bryan
It will ferment all the way down to 0.992-0.994 if you don’t kill the yeast off right now. I would add gelatin right now, today, which will get rid of most of the yeast in a very short time and improve clarity, then after 24 hours with the gelatin, rack it again and add sorbate and sulfite in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions to further kill off the remaining yeast. Also keep it cold as you can in the refrigerator, 32-40 F. It’s already too late to retain natural sweetness, but you can prevent it from fermenting further with these techniques, and then can backsweeten later on. I would leave it cold for at least a week or two before backsweetening, then leave it for another week or two (longer is always better) before bottling to make sure fermentation doesn’t take off again, and if it does you might need to keep racking and add more sorbate and sulfite to arrest fermentation.
It will taste great regardless, but at this stage it is already very dry and tart. It will take some more time to get sweetness back in there without exploding your bottles. If you keg the cider, then the timeframes can all be sped up since you won’t have to worry about explosions. Good luck.
Dave,
I have Campden tablets and the unflavored gelatin. After racking it the first time the cider is very clear currently. Which would be better to use? Or both? How does the gelatin work? What does it do? I saw in another post you made that you heat some water, dissolve the gelatin and then pour it in. Then you mix it well? Will stuff start to fall to the bottom again? Don’t have a refrigerator I can pit the carboy in. I assume it will stay around 65 where I have it sitting. Let me know what you think.
Thanks for all the help.
Bryan
If the cider is already clear then the gelatin won’t do anything for you. It removes yeast. If there was a lot of yeast still working then it would be in suspension clouding up the cider. If not cloudy then your fermentation might already be done. So skip that and just add your Campden and sorbate to kill off the remaining yeast.
Grrrrr. I added the Campden tablets this morning, then noticed that you mentioned adding sorbate as well. Will it be a problem adding the sorbate 36 or so hours after the Campden? Didn’t know I had to have it until after my brew shop had closed for the day. Let me know. Thanks.
Bryan
You’ll be fine. It’s optional but helps to kill what the Campden doesn’t.
Don’t mean to contradict you Dave, but neither one kills the yeast - except in very high concentrations. The sulfite stuns the yeast, makes it “sick” so it won’t ferment efficiently and makes it more vulnerable to the sorbate. The sorbate prevents the yeast from budding so you won’t get new cells growing and starting the fermentation again.
36 hours delay is OK, but if you go much longer you should think about adding a bit more sulfite.
