So the GF and I want to make a cider for her birthday. She likes ciders on the sweeter side which means I will have to halt the cider from fermenting all the way out. I do not have kegging equipment or the space to do such which would be the easiest way...
So my solution to this problem would be to:
1)Start the cider fermenting
2)Take hydrometer readings until it is around 1.030
3)Bottle
4)Allow to carb in bottle and pop open a bottle periodically to check for carbonation level
5)Halt fermentation by placing the bottles into 150F water bath for 5 minutes
6)Cold crash in the fridge to clarify
7)Age/drink
My questions:
How long(approximately) would it take the bottles to carb up?
Would the water bath effectively kill the yeast and prevent bottle bombs?
Is my plan idiotic?
Yeast kick off some wacky flavors even when there done fermenting and beers get that warm. I left some in a car once when i went camping and it got really hot and they were terrible. If you didn't need it carbonated i would say just use potasium sorbate but in your case....hmm....someone else is going to have to chime in. Although once they get carbonated you could pop them in a fridge and as long as they all stayed refridgerated you shouldnt have a problem. The yeast should drop out of solution and go dormant. If it gets warm again all bets are off and your going to have exploding bottles so make lots of room in your fridge
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I'd ferment dry & back sweeten with non-fermentable sugar like lactose or splenda. then prime like beer & bottle. I think that would be the easiest way to get what you're wanting, but certainly not the only way. Regards, GF.
I just did something similar, and it worked nicely. I fermented out to a dry cider, about 5 weeks, and then I backsweetened with sugar (dissolved in warm cider), and bottled. I took others' advice and bottled one in plastic (an empty spring water bottle) to use as a guide to see if the pressure was building inside. I probably sweetened to about 1.02, and at first it seemed like nothing was going on in the plastic bottle, but after a week it started to get less soft, and at about 2 1/2 weeks it was hard and clearly carbonated - nice and tight. I opened a few bottles to test as well, just to satisfy my curiosity - nice bubbles. I pasteurized in a hot water bath, about 160 degrees, for 15 minutes (also based on what I read on this forum). I haven't tasted one yet, but gave one to my neighbor, who really liked it. No explosions during the hot bath, which someone had warned me about.
A few comments - my cider was 'almost' clear, and the day after bottling, the bottles were clear with some sediment, probably a little more sediment than I would have liked. I wonder if one more racking might have knocked the sediment down, as that's what seems to have happened in the bottle. That said, if I knocked out more yeast, I may change the carbonation rate to something slower. Also, the 'improves with age' aspect of cider might be affected here, because it's the malolactic fermentation that smooths out some of the bitterness. If you pasteurize, you'll stop that as well. I started a thread about that, and was told that since I had a semi-sweet cider, any bitterness would probably be hard to notice anyway.
That's my 2 cents based on my experience of one batch of cider (currently working on #2)
I'd ferment dry & back sweeten with non-fermentable sugar like lactose or splenda. then prime like beer & bottle. I think that would be the easiest way to get what you're wanting, but certainly not the only way. Regards, GF.
+1 halting an unfinished fermentation will taste like poo IMO...You need those yeast to clean it up for a while. I don't know when your GF b-day is, but cider takes a while before drinkable or al least enjoyable
I would say primary for 2-3 weeks, secondary 1-2 months (longer is better but go off taste). Should be clear by then. rack and add unfermentable sweetener to taste and then prime and bottle. my .02
I also treat cider more like a wine (i.e. rack off lees when possible)...the sediment in a cider may cause off flavors if it is left to age on it for long periods of time.
good luck!
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Thanks. My GF's birthday is May but the present isn't going to be the finished product but rather the stuff to make it together.
I will probably ferment to dryness, rack to secondary for a month and then let her back sweeten with lactose until she gets it to the sweetness she likes, then add priming sugar to carb the bottles.
Technically, you can't cold crash. That requires a racking in combination with the cold, which you can't do since they are bottled.
Throw some pectic enzyme in it after the k-meta, but before the yeast. When the yeast starts to die off and fall to the bottom, the pectic enzyme will take the other solids with it at the same time.
Thanks. My GF's birthday is May but the present isn't going to be the finished product but rather the stuff to make it together.
I will probably ferment to dryness, rack to secondary for a month and then let her back sweeten with lactose until she gets it to the sweetness she likes, then add priming sugar to carb the bottles.
sounds like a good plan to me
__________________
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
----Frank Zappa
Would this work?
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