This is my first time brewing anything, and I’m wondering if I’m on the right track. I’m using a gallon of store bought apple juice (no perervatives). I pitched about 1/2 teaspoon of Lalvlin EC-1118 (Didn’t hydrate it, just poured it into the container and agitated it) I have the airlock on and it’s in a dark corner of a room that’s about 75 F.
It’s been over 48 hours and there’s no activity in the airlock. There’s a thin layer of “bubbles” on the top of the liquid.
Is this normal? Should I do something different? I’m thinking I may need more yeast. Thanks for any tips or suggestions.
It might be OK, is the cider cloudy (from the yeast)? You won’t get the same levels of krausen as beer, as the cider doesn’t have the proteins like beer to hold the suds.
I’m trying to remember when I made a couple batches of cider last year. I think I pitched the whole packet into 3 gallons of juice. It seems for a gallon you’d shoot for half a packet, the lalvin packs are small, so maybe 1/2 t would be enough? If you saved the rest of the yeast you could always chuck it in. I think it also takes a little longer for the yeast to kick in for cider.
Cider didn’t seem cloudy. I pitched more than half of the pack of yeast yesterday and there was a lot of activity in the cider. (Kind of fizzy.) Airlock’s back on, so I’ll have to see if there’s any changes.
I just made my first one this past sunday. I rehydrated the whole 11.5g Safale-05 packet and it’s going slower than my beer. From what I’ve read the fermentation will be less vigorous than beer. Since you pitched a smaller amount I’m assuming they are working on growing more than fermenting. Give it some time and it should pick up a bit more for you. Don’t expect a lot of airlock activity like you would with beer. Right now my airlock is bubbling once every 15-20 seconds and I can see the CO2 bubbles floating up. I also cheated a bit and put a hydrometer in the carboy so I know for sure it’s fermenting.
I ended up dumping out my cider and starting over. I think the issue was the airlock not being on tight enough. With the new batch I hade nice bubbles in the airlock pretty quickly
When making cider I would highly recommend fermenting in the lower end of the temperature range for the yeast that you are using. FWIW if you are experiencing issues is has nothing to do with how tight you have the airlock on during active fermentation.
