HELP: Can too much "tart" be fixed?

I back sweetened my cider with tart cherry juice. It seemed like a really good idea at the time... Instead of a delicious cherry flavor in my (previously) delicious apple cider, I have a reddish concoction that will turn your mouth inside out. I didn't know if adding, idk, K-bicarbonate or some other base would decrease it some or if my only solution is to rack half into another carboy and add 3 gallons of fresh apple juice to dilute is my only option. That would pretty much make me start from scratch. :-(

Please help!

I am interested to hear some replies...

My first thought is to make a strong, dry apfelwein and blend the two to make it better?

Not sure if adding chemicals to balance the ph would add potential off flavors?

Might let it age some before you do anything. I made a half apple half cranberry cider that was pretty tart at first and some of the tartness seemed to fade with time.

So maybe waiting a month or so and taste again. You might still have to do something then, but it could make it easier

I justmade a cranberry blueberry apple cider mix. It was acid out of the fermenator. After back sweatening and aging one month in the bottles, it is really drinkable. It tastes better if I add a teaspoon to the bottle before drinking. So let it age.

Vikings said:

I back sweetened my cider with tart cherry juice. It seemed like a really good idea at the time... Instead of a delicious cherry flavor in my (previously) delicious apple cider, I have a reddish concoction that will turn your mouth inside out. I didn't know if adding, idk, K-bicarbonate or some other base would decrease it some or if my only solution is to rack half into another carboy and add 3 gallons of fresh apple juice to dilute is my only option. That would pretty much make me start from scratch. :-(

Please help!

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Yes. IMHO, the best thing to do with your way too tart cider is age it. The acid from the tart cherry juice will age out. I had the same problem with a cherry wine, thought I might have to do some acid reduction, but then I got busy & kind of forgot about it for a while. Fast forward a year & it was AWESOME! All I had to do was wait.

Now you can do some acid reduction with calcium carbonate, but if you do, you run the risk of ending up with a cider that has a "chalky" taste, kind of like Tumm's antacid. I gues it all depends on whether you can wait, or whether you're in a hurry & how much risk you're willing to take; if it was me, I'd wait. I mean, I can make another cider (or 3) to drink while I wait.
Regards, GF.

This may be a dumb question, as I think I'm missing something, but if the cider is too tart and dry, why not sweeten it?

It would be simple to add some sorbate and campden, and then sweeten to taste with honey, cider, sugar syrup, whatever.

Yooper said:

This may be a dumb question, as I think I'm missing something, but if the cider is too tart and dry, why not sweeten it?

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I back sweetened with the cherry juice concentrate to 1.020, so I don't want to add additional sugar.

I decided to go with dilution. I have a 3 gallon carboy sitting empty, so I just picked up 3 gallons of fresh cider. I'm going to put one gallon in the 3 gallon carboy, then rack over 2 gallons of the original. Then add the other two gallons to the 1st batch. It gives me some extra to play around with. I hope it works!

Normally, I would wait. However, I have big plans for this cider in about a month. Cider is supposed to be one of the drinks that is decent while young, and after the success if my Skeeter Pee I was asked to make something for our Halloween bonfire. I'm probably going to age out the three gallon batch and see if some of my ideas work. ;-) thank you all for your input, and I'll keep this updated with the results.

Update: I cold crashed the 3 gallon a couple of weeks ago. I put it in the fridge at 1.010, but when I checked yesterday it had gone down to 1.000. The taste was not at all what I was aiming for, but tasty. I made the caramel sauce to back sweeten to 1.015 and bottled. There is a winery on Old Mission Peninsula outside of Traverse City, Mi that has a spiced cherry wine and that is almost exactly what this cider turned out as. The apple is barely there, with cherry all over, but it tastes like Christmas! I'm hoping that bottle carbing and then pasteurizing won't change it too much!

Lesson learned? Go gentle....very, very gentle, with cherry concentrate. I'd say 1/16 cup/gallon would be detectable. Unless you want a cherry cider, in which 2 cups per 8 gallons is perfect!