hi alc hi bitters wanting to bottle carb cider

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jason_g

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This is my first cider and maybe I pushed to hard to fast but here it is...
I started with 5 gallons of juice I used a gallon of water and disolved, on the stove, 3lbs of dme and 5lbs of table sugar. This put my OG at a 1.096 I pithed a wine/cider yeast from the lhbs. It has been fermenting strong now for about twelve days (way longer than any of my brews) and it has little to no sweetnes left and it around a 1.035.
What I want is a sweet-ish cider that I can bottle carb with out blowing bottles. I have read about cold crashing and pasterising but I still dont know how I should proceed to reach my goals or if it is even possible... please help

Bottled: wet dream strawberry blonde ale and caramel king scotch ale
Secondary: Perves cider
Primary: American honey nut brown ale
 
Champagne yeast makes more of a dry cider. If your looking for more sweet I would use a British ale yeast makes it more sweeter than a champaign yeast
 
Ale yeasts will also ferment completely dry if you let them. There's more to it that just using one strain over the other. Ale yeasts are easier to crash by racking and cooling (IMO) they also seem to leave a little more of the apple flavor which helps in young ciders.

With that original gravity, you're basically making wine. No matter what yeast you use, it's going to need to sit and age for a while. You will probably need to let it ferment dry and then back sweeten it to your tastes, bottle and pasteurize (for carbonated cider)
 
A reading of 1.035 is really sweet. I'm not sure why it doesn't taste sweet to you- that is sweeter than a "sweet" wine, and on the level of a dessert wine.

I don't have a sweet tooth, and a cider at 1.035 would be far too sweet for me to drink.

Are you certain it tastes dry to you?

If you want to bottle now, you could pasteurize in the bottle when it gets carbed up a bit (a day or two, probably).
 
If you use a non-fermentable sweeteners, then yes, you will also need to add your priming sugar as normal then pasteurize when it gets carbonated.

Since you are pasteurizing, you could also use fermentable sugars as well. Concentrate, Brown Sugar, Honey, Simple Syrup, Dextrose, etc. (It doesn't have to be non-fermenting unless you just like the taste of splenda etc)

As for what Yooper said, she is correct. 1.035 is pretty sweet in my opinion as well. It was recently discussed that Angry Orchard's Final Gravity is about the same, so I assume "sweet" is all up to individual taste buds.
 
jason_g said:
This is my first cider and maybe I pushed to hard to fast but here it is...
I started with 5 gallons of juice I used a gallon of water and disolved, on the stove, 3lbs of dme and 5lbs of table sugar. This put my OG at a 1.096 I pithed a wine/cider yeast from the lhbs. It has been fermenting strong now for about twelve days (way longer than any of my brews) and it has little to no sweetnes left and it around a 1.035.
What I want is a sweet-ish cider that I can bottle carb with out blowing bottles. I have read about cold crashing and pasterising but I still dont know how I should proceed to reach my goals or if it is even possible... please help

Bottled: wet dream strawberry blonde ale and caramel king scotch ale
Secondary: Perves cider
Primary: American honey nut brown ale
Click to expand...

If it's still not as sweet as you would like try adding sweet n low or dextrose or try back sweetening.
 

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