French Cider bottling carbonating?

Hey guys,

I'm a big fan of the Domaine Dupont ciders and would like to make something similar. I'm a little bit confused by some of the stats for the Bouche Brut on their website, though. To me, this cider tastes bone dry, but on their site they say they bottle it when it reaches 1.024 gravity and then it undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle. I know it is carbonated fairly high, but given the bone dry taste, it would seem that this would cause bottle bombs?

They indicate that after bottle refermentation, the cider ends out at 5.5%, which would be around 1.018. How do they get it to finish so high? All of my ciders ferment out very dry.

I'm fine fermenting out and then adding sugar at bottling time to get a nice carb, but how would I achieve a similar final gravity?

seems like you'd have to pasteurize. you could bottle at 1.024 like they say, but keep a sample in a soda bottle or something you can sample. keep an eye on it, and when it reaches 1.018, pasteurize.

on a personal note, pasteurizing makes me nervous. i've only done it once, and i didn't have any problems, but i've read stories here on people who have.

The French use keeving for a sweet carbonated cider. They control nitrogen levels and yeast cell counts to prevent bottle bombs, fairly high tech stuff. If it tastes dry to you I think you have been drinking too much sweet stuff.

I'd be interested in your recipe. My wife is from Normandy and we really only drink it there or when we bring a bottle or 2 back. I'm sure she'd love to be able to have it whenever she wanted.

gregbathurst said:

The French use keeving for a sweet carbonated cider. They control nitrogen levels and yeast cell counts to prevent bottle bombs, fairly high tech stuff. If it tastes dry to you I think you have been drinking too much sweet stuff.

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Thanks for that. It looks like a fairly complicated process, albeit one that can potentially be done on a homebrew scale. I'm going to wait to try this until I can get decent orchard cider here in the fall.