How much brown sugar syrup to mix in before bottling

mailbett · 04-02-2009, 05:00 PM

My first batch. I've got 4.5 gallons of flat cider (white wine yeast, a little orange juice, and some dead yeast) fully fermented. I'm ready to heat, mix in a homemade brown sugar syrup, and bottle the whole batch.

I'm looking for recommendations of what proportion of this brown sugar syrup I should mix in. (Unless is it strongly recommended I use maple syrup or honey.) With test bottles I used as much as 2 oz brown sugar syrup per 10 oz cider, and though it was quite tasty--though not super-sweet--it was extremely fizzy and overflowed the bottle when uncapped. Is this much fizziness just the price to pay for putting in so much sugar, or is there a good method for reducing the fizz? And does the alcohol content rise with more sugar? Sorry if all this has been addressed before.

The test bottles also tasted yeasty at the bottom; will running the cider through a tea strainer en route to the heating pan help this?

Tusch · 04-03-2009, 12:13 AM

I'm confused on one thing, are you heating your cider post fermentation? I never heat it pre-fermentation though some do, but I've never heard of heating it after.

The amount of syrup depends solely on the amount of sugar in the syrup. To carbonate add roughly 1oz of sugar per gallon of cider. I'm not sure what type of bottles you are using, but if you are using crown cap glass bottles, I'm guessing you have some serious risk of bottle bombs from your current methods. 2oz brown sugar syrup per 10oz cider, no matter how watered down the syrup is has got to be WAY overkill and very unsafe.

You have to be very careful with the amount of sugar you used to carbonated with. If you use too much, the bottle will explode shooting glass shards out at high speeds, which tend to you know... hurt.

mailbett · 04-03-2009, 01:43 AM

Thanks for replying. Yeah, I've already fermented the cider. It's been sitting since about the beginning of January and is fairly clear. The recipe I had didn't mention sugar before fermentation, so I guess I'm talking about back-sweetening (sorry, new to these terms). It suggested sweetening prior to bottling by heating brown sugar and water into a thick syrup, and then warming (never boiling) the cider to stir it in, presumably because it would mix better that way.

I want to sweeten my cider, increase the alcohol content, and carbonate. After browsing these boards for quite some time today, it seems that if I want to really accomplish the first two, I'm going to have to add the sugar and let it sit for a while longer before bottling--is that right? If so, how long should it sit with sugar before bottling?

flylock_jac · 04-03-2009, 02:01 AM

You need to backsweeten with something that doesn't ferment. lactose (milk sugar) or artificial sweetener. Adding any type of sugar will start fermentation again. The amount used for bottling is very small yet ferments enough to cause carbonation . too much and you'll risk bottle bombs.

Tusch · 04-03-2009, 03:08 AM

If you want it sweet, use either non fermentable sugars, as flylock mentioned, or stabilize with campden and potassium sorbate and backsweeten with any sugar you want.

If you want a high abv content, add a fermentable sugar prior to fermentation or during. But not after, this as mentioned will restart the fermentation process.

If you want to carbonate, add 1 oz sugar per gallon prior to bottling. To do this, measure out your sugar and dissolve in just enough water to make it liquid. Put this in a bottling bucket, or just a plain bucket. Then siphon your cider into this container, the siphoning process will be enough to mix the sugar with the cider.

You can not in one step sweeten, increase the abv and carbonate. You increase the abv prior to fermentation or during. You sweeten after. And you carbonate after. The only ways to carbonate and sweeten a batch is to use a nonfermentable sugar for sweetening and a fermentable sugar for carbonating, or you can stabilize sweeten with sugar and then force carbonate through kegging.

Not sure where you are getting your info and processes, but they seem very unsafe and inaccurate to me.