Carbonation next time

Cider
1

Greetings!

After finishing up my first two successful batches (5 gallons each) of hard cider - I am looking forward to making my next batches. Thanks again for all the help here on the Cider forum!

I was pleased w/ the outcome of my first two batches. The one minor disappointment I had was that I wish it wasn’t flat. Now I know it was going to be flat because I took it down to a low SG and then added campden tabs before I bottled - but I miss the carbonation. The taste is great - but it would be better if it wasn’t flat.

So I am hoping to “carbonate” my next batches. One way is to get a keggerator - brew the cider like I’ve already done - but transfer it into a corny keg instead of bottling - and let the CO2 tank do it’s thing…

I believe the other way to carbonate in a bottle is to not kill the yeast after secondary fermentation - add a “primer/backsweetner” before bottling and bottle? Any suggestions as to what SG I might want to be at?

Thanks!!!

2

Well, I advocate kegging. After several years of bottling everything, I bought the kegerator and the brewing life became much easier.

For cider in a keg, it’s easy enough to let the cider come to it’s own final gravity conclusion, stun/kill the yeast, add apple concentrate to the keg to backsweeten to your taste , rack the cider to keg over the concentrate, seal it, pressurize it, vent out the oxygen, shake up the concentrate, and let it carbonate under pressure. Holy run on sentence Batman.

Kegging is so much easier with no chance of bottle bombs. My two cents of advice.

3

That’s what I’m thinking - time to get into kegging. For carbonating cider as well brewing beer… ’

Positive brewing karma to you Positive Voodoo!