OK. My First attempt at a cider. I feel like I am asking the proverbial “Is my beer ruined?” I do have a tad bit of concern though. I got 5 gallons of locally pressed cider, I bought them, they sat in a warm car for a couple of hours, then I put them in the fridge. A few days later I went to get something out of that fridge. The plastic gallon jugs were ready to pop, literally. So I quick sanitized my fermenter and grabbed a jar of my S-04 / S-05 slurry. I tasted the first gallon of cider and it tasted fine.
My initial concern is that the cider was “UV Pasteurized”. Should I get this kind of activity if it was pasteurized properly? Is this likely a wild yeast strain doing the work or something rogue… not so interested in a sour.
It’s pretty common for pasteurized cider to start to ferment on it’s own eventually. Depends a lot on how long before you bought it it was pressed and how clean the pressing equipment is kept. In general a little bit of that action isn’t going to completely kill a cider but it might yield unpredictable results or a cider that isn’t too stable. I would go ahead and ferment it and see what happens. It will probably not sour like a beer and even if it got some sourness you’ll be less likely to notice b/c cider is acidic anyway. A typical ph is in the 3.5 range whereas beer is 4.5 after fermenting. One option would be to sulfite it after it ferments or before if you haven’t pitched the yeast already.
This is totally normal if the cider sits out of refigeration for more than 2 seconds… and even in the fridge it will ferment after just a week or two. Even if pasteurized, it’s probably not 100.000000% pasteurized, which gives that one tiny bug that survived a chance to start fermenting the cider.
Don’t worry about it. As JLap said, you could have sulfited to kill the wild beasts before adding your own, but if you’ve pitched your yeast slurry then you’re already too late for that. My guess is that it will still turn out great. It’s not real easy to screw up hard cider.
It was my understanding that UV pasteurization doesn’t kill yeasts, so one would need to still use campden tablets. I assume that the UV treatment is to kill food-poisoning critters.
Soooo. My cousin calls on Saturday and they still have 11 gallons of this cider and the jugs are expanding. They run a farm stand and kept the cider in a cooler that keeps the veges at a cool temp but probably warm by fridge standards. It was only a few days old but explains a lot.
On Sunday, I figured all the same juice so I added it to the 5 gallons I had fermenting. I didnt have time to get camden pellets or nutrient.
Assuming I will have @ 15 gallons of fermented cider. I am sure I will need to taste it to see how I will proceed. What should I expect to taste after a couple of weeks of primary? What should I be concerned with? Looking for? Etc.
I am planning on aging this for 1 year till next fall.
If it tastes questionable, I will probably keg it and wait.
If it tastes good I have a few things in mind. 1 keg is left alone. One could be iced distilled? Or I am interested in cysers, so maybe add honey to part of it (or brewing separately and blending?). One could be spiced?
