Can I bottle?

I just checked the final gravity on my first 5 gallon batch of cider. I was mystified at first by getting a reading of 1.030 after a month of active fermentation! Then I remembered to spin the hydrometer to free the bubbles. Dur. Once I got over that hurdle, I got a reading of 1.000 or maybe even slightly lower. I know that people generally say that you can bottle at 1.010 or 1.005 and below, but there is a suspiciously large amount of bubbles in the cider right now. I suspect that if I actually poured a glass, I'd get quite a bit of fizzing.

Can I prime and bottle now? Should I just bottle it still and hope for the best? If I do prime, how much should I use? I plan to use brown sugar and I think what I see around these forums is something like 1/2 cup for 5 gallons. Or should I use less since I suspect some continued activity?

It sounds like you are having the same issues I am. What I was told is that if you are reading that low of a gravity, then it probably is done, or close to done, fermenting and the bubbling activity is just trapped CO2. That's the explanation I am running with anyway. Ill be bottling my cider tonight. Not sure if I'll backsweeten, or just add priming sugar then bottle; it's going to be a game-time decision.

Apple_Jacker said:

It sounds like you are having the same issues I am. What I was told is that if you are reading that low of a gravity, then it probably is done, or close to done, fermenting and the bubbling activity is just trapped CO2. That's the explanation I am running with anyway. Ill be bottling my cider tonight. Not sure if I'll backsweeten, or just add priming sugar then bottle; it's going to be a game-time decision.

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Yup. And even more so, the lower the temperature during fermentation, the more CO2 will be trapped in the must.

So I suppose I assume it is completed and I prime accordingly.

So I went ahead and used 1 can of apple juice concentrate for backsweetening and 1/2 cup brown sugar for priming. I simmered the brown sugar with the juice concentrate until it dissolved and let it cool while I sanitized and rinsed everything. I gave back the extra fermentation bucket I borrowed, and I didn't want to stir any additional sediment back into the cider, so I did the calculations and evenly distributed the juice/sugar mixture into all 68 bottles I prepped....I will NEVER do any bottling again without a secondary carboy/bucket! Anyway, after doing that, I filled all of my bottles with no problems and capped them all. I made sure to fill up a plastic pop bottle as well so I can gauge the carbonation.

Now here I am less than 24 hours later and the pop bottle is already feeling pretty firm. Not rock hard, but it's getting close to being as firm as a regular unopened pop bottle. Any idea why this happened so fast? Is it because of the sugar and juice concentrate mixture I added? Is it because I didn't let the trapped CO2 finish expelling from my cider? I also didn't use any pectic enzyme or anything to clarify my cider...having sediment on the bottom of the bottles really will not bother me for this run but I'll clear it out for my next batch. I might crack open a bottle to see where it is at just to make sure I don't have a shatload of bottle bombs in the works! If it is fine then I will re-cap it and wait patiently.

cider can easily go as low as .990, so by bottling it at 1.000 AND sweetening AND priming means that you're going to have serious bottle bombs. Your sweetener will be fermented, as will the priming sugar, and the cider wasn't done fermenting to begin with.

Either put them somewhere cold NOW to hopefully stop the yeast and/or try pasteurizing them before they blow up or open them all and put them back into a carboy and let it ferment out.

Well I opened my pop bottle first to see what it looked like and it had the amount of fizz I was looking for. So, I cracked open one of the glass bottles...At first it seem to fizz up fine then it fizzed pretty crazy and reached to the top of the bottle but did not spill out. I figured I was playing with dynamite at that piont and and removed everything from my refrigerator, placed all of the bottles inside and put all of my food back in....I'm pretty impressed I was able to fit it all in there! Not sure what my girlfriend will have to say about it, but it's better than explaining why there are shards of glass and cider all over my house!

EDIT: Now that a few more minutes have passed since I initially opened this bottle, the carbonation has almost all but disappeared. I will still leave all of the unopened bottles in the refigerator, but here's hoping the rest of them don't lose their carbonation quite so fast. Lesson definitely learned here!

What kind of yeast did you use?

What was your original gravity reading?

Ive bottled plain juice & yeast ciders fermented with Nottingham at 1.008 and primed with 8oz. apple juice/gallon and never had a bottle bomb, not even after a year. I think knowing the type of yeast you used will help.

Eric

I used Red Star Premeir Cuvee wine yeast. The O.G. was 1.080 and the F.G. was 1.000.

Apple_Jacker said:

I used Red Star Premeir Cuvee wine yeast. The O.G. was 1.080 and the F.G. was 1.000.

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That yeast can go up to 18%. At 1.000, it was not done. With sweetening AND priming, bottle bombs are a certainty.

18%?? I thought 11 or 12% max! Well I did put them in the refrigerator immediately and turned the temp. down. The bottles are feeling cool to the touch now and I'm hoping the yeast are neutralized. I just cracked open a second bottle and the cider itself has cooled down now. Hopefully the yeast will slow down or stop soon. It fizzed a little but, had about 3/8" of head that fizzed above the surface but didn't go beyond that. If all of them are like this than I will be very pleased! It may be premature to say, but I think I dodged a bullet (or bottle bombs as it were) this time.

In case you are wondering, it is pretty damn good for how young it is. There is a definite bite of the alcohol initially, but it is followed by a distict sweet appley taste. Leaps and bounds better than what I had with my first attempt taste-wise, but I'll have to be more careful with the natural carbing next time.

Edit: Double Post

After such a short period of developing carbonation, the fizz you are finding may be mostly what was already fermented into the cider.

It’s a double-edged sword ... you’ve refrigerated because you don’t want bottle-bombs, but this also could also prevent the full carbonation of the cider. Something of course that is to your own tastes in any regard.

It is common for the plastic bottle to firm up quite a bit, fairly rapidly. It’s when they really get good and hard that you are feeling the awaited results of this test.
The real test is by periodically opening a bottle to check the carbonation.

You've mentioned you like its carbonation now ... but on the chance you want to more fully carbonate it, and while I'm waiting for some guests who are (very) late arriving and I'm sitting here bored to tears ... here's a bit about further carbonating.

You did over prime the cider, but possibly not quite to the degree that it might first seem ... in other words not anything like double or triple etc the amount you should have ... maybe more like only by another half as much as you should have.

I agree ... these bottles of cider are possibly destined to be an explosive batch if left to carbonate fully without stopping the action at some time. But, if ... IF you want, I think you can salvage it as a fully carbonated batch of sparkling cider.

The following is approximate ...
your can of apple juice, when reconstituted, should yield 48oz of 1.040 SG liquid. While a gallon of 1.040 liquid contains approx 14oz of sugar, 48oz then contains 5.25 oz of sugar.
You also added an additional ½ cup or 4 oz of additional sugar. (nevermind it had molasses in it)
5.25oz plus 4oz = 9.25 oz sugar total.
½ oz sugar added to a gallon = approx 1 volume of additional CO2.
9.25 oz priming sugar to a gallon is 18.5 volumes ... or when distributed over 5 gallons = approx 3.7 volumes.

Add to that “3.7 volumes of CO2” any residual sugars in your cider IF it had not yet fermented totally dry, and also the volume of CO2 that had installed itself into the must during fermentation, and I think you are actually somewheres approximately in the low to mid 4’s in terms of potential volumes of CO2 if allowed to fully carbonate.
This is not entirely unheard of for some brewing and even vinting. Some wheatbeers (notably Dunkelweizin), some Lambics and Belgian Sour ales have CO2 up to about 4.5 volumes (this would be the very maximum). Some sparkling meads get above 4 too. Cider is not uncommon at 3.5 to nearly 4. The question of course is what will explode one of your bottles.

So, I would say that if you want to unpack all that cider from your refrigerator and watchfully let it carbonate in a proper temperature of say 70* to 75* and under a blanket ... opening a bottle every couple (or so) days, you can still get it to carbonate properly, and then either pasteurize or put it back into the icebox. I would think this could make a very pleasant, just slightly semi-sweet, sparkling cider.

Certainly if you like it as is, and don't want to risk having to re-paint the ceiling etc, you might want to keep it as is. On the other hand, if it were me ... I like a lot of carbonation.

yeah I opened a 3rd bottle tonight and this one wasn't as carbonated as I wanted but it wasn't flat either. not sure how i want to approach this situation yet but at least it is under control

Jacob_Marley said:

After such a short period of developing carbonation, the fizz you are finding may be mostly what was already fermented into the cider.

It’s a double-edged sword ... you’ve refrigerated because you don’t want bottle-bombs, but this also could also prevent the full carbonation of the cider. Something of course that is to your own tastes in any regard.

It is common for the plastic bottle to firm up quite a bit, fairly rapidly. It’s when they really get good and hard that you are feeling the awaited results of this test.
The real test is by periodically opening a bottle to check the carbonation.

You've mentioned you like its carbonation now ... but on the chance you want to more fully carbonate it, and while I'm waiting for some guests who are (very) late arriving and I'm sitting here bored to tears ... here's a bit about further carbonating.

You did over prime the cider, but possibly not quite to the degree that it might first seem ... in other words not anything like double or triple etc the amount you should have ... maybe more like only by another half as much as you should have.

I agree ... these bottles of cider are possibly destined to be an explosive batch if left to carbonate fully without stopping the action at some time. But, if ... IF you want, I think you can salvage it as a fully carbonated batch of sparkling cider.

The following is approximate ...
your can of apple juice, when reconstituted, should yield 48oz of 1.040 SG liquid. While a gallon of 1.040 liquid contains approx 14oz of sugar, 48oz then contains 5.25 oz of sugar.
You also added an additional ½ cup or 4 oz of additional sugar. (nevermind it had molasses in it)
5.25oz plus 4oz = 9.25 oz sugar total.
½ oz sugar added to a gallon = approx 1 volume of additional CO2.
9.25 oz priming sugar to a gallon is 18.5 volumes ... or when distributed over 5 gallons = approx 3.7 volumes.

Add to that “3.7 volumes of CO2” any residual sugars in your cider IF it had not yet fermented totally dry, and also the volume of CO2 that had installed itself into the must during fermentation, and I think you are actually somewheres approximately in the low to mid 4’s in terms of potential volumes of CO2 if allowed to fully carbonate.
This is not entirely unheard of for some brewing and even vinting. Some wheatbeers (notably Dunkelweizin), some Lambics and Belgian Sour ales have CO2 up to about 4.5 volumes (this would be the very maximum). Some sparkling meads get above 4 too. Cider is not uncommon at 3.5 to nearly 4. The question of course is what will explode one of your bottles.

So, I would say that if you want to unpack all that cider from your refrigerator and watchfully let it carbonate in a proper temperature of say 70* to 75* and under a blanket ... opening a bottle every couple (or so) days, you can still get it to carbonate properly, and then either pasteurize or put it back into the icebox. I would think this could make a very pleasant, just slightly semi-sweet, sparkling cider.

Certainly if you like it as is, and don't want to risk having to re-paint the ceiling etc, you might want to keep it as is. On the other hand, if it were me ... I like a lot of carbonation.

Click to expand...

Well that was a very informative reply thank you! Yeah the third bottle I tried was't carbonated to my liking, so I am seeing already that 3 bottles had 3 different levels of carbonation to them. Maybe I'll take a few out with the plastic bottle again and see what happens.