Did my bottling ruin it??

So I bottled one of my 5 gallon batches last week. When bottling it tasted pretty good. My plan was to bottle age it till next christmas. However, last night (New Years) I decided to crack open one bottle, early in the day so I could get a feel for the taste. It was unbearable!! I'm not sure how to descibe it, but I could only manage to take 3-4 sips and had to dump it out.

The bottles were soaked in oxyclean to remove lables one week, rinsed and boxed. Then before bottling I soaked them in a mixture of C-Brite and Camden tablets. Then rinsed well with hot water and bottled. I believe that adding the cider to bottles is what made the nasty taste. I will still let these sit till next year. If it was the cleaner i used do you think it would go away over time?

If the bottles weren't rinsed well from the cleaner, that won't improve. But, I'm not sure it's the cleaner any way.

Remember, that sanitizer is "no rinse" and you don't have to rinse it off. That kind of defeats the purpose of sanitizing. You shouldn't mix c-brite and campden, as there is no need to do that. Properly diluted campden (sulfite) solution is a very effective sanitizer.

One thing that comes to mind for me is something called "bottle shock". I'm not sure if this happens in cider, but it's common in wines. Sometimes just the act of bottling causes the wine to go "off" a bit. It's the movement of the wine and the racking and bottling. Within a month or two, though, it's much improved. Hopefully, this is what's happened in your cider. Try another bottle in two months, and I bet that it'll be much better!

Oh i hope so!! Thanks

let it sit.....time....time...and more time. If you try it next June I'll bet you'll be pleasantly surprised