h4mmy86
Well-Known Member
So here's the story,
my homebrew club got together back around October of last year and we did a cider pressing. Lots of fun! Anyway, we all left with 5 gallons of fresh pressed apple juice from a mixed variety of apples.
I didn't have any yeast at the time so I had to order some (I hate not having a LHBS)
This left the juice sitting for what I'm guessing to be about a week. In this time wild yeast started fermenting the juice. I saw what was happening, and added some campden tablets to kill off the wild fermentation a couple days before I was able to pitch the intended yeast.
I didn't check gravity so I dunno how far the wild yeast got before I was able to pitch my bought yeast.
I pitched the cider wyeast on 10/15/12, and left it in the primary for another 3 weeks or so.
After the cider was all fermented out, I racked to a secondary (FG was right around 1.000 even), and this is where it sits now. Much to my surprise the gravity sample I sipped when transferring was pretty damn tasty, not half as funky as I expected.
I'd like to bottle condition this cider, carb it up a bit, and add maybe just a slight little hint of sweetness. I'm thinking I'd either like to add some store bought juice at bottling or some brown sugar. I'm not trying to back sweeten so much, or to make anything super sweet. I'd actually rather it remain closer to the dry side of things, but just a lil sweetness to ease the tart flavors could be nice (or so SWMBO says.)
What do you guys think? How am I going to create the cider I'm envisioning? I'm kind of assuming I'll need to add some more yeast at bottling but I'm not completely sure. I'd like to get away without needing to pasteurize, but I guess I could if need be. Refrigerating the bottles in the more likely choice (again, only if absolutely necessary).
Thanks for the help!
my homebrew club got together back around October of last year and we did a cider pressing. Lots of fun! Anyway, we all left with 5 gallons of fresh pressed apple juice from a mixed variety of apples.
I didn't have any yeast at the time so I had to order some (I hate not having a LHBS)
This left the juice sitting for what I'm guessing to be about a week. In this time wild yeast started fermenting the juice. I saw what was happening, and added some campden tablets to kill off the wild fermentation a couple days before I was able to pitch the intended yeast.
I didn't check gravity so I dunno how far the wild yeast got before I was able to pitch my bought yeast.
I pitched the cider wyeast on 10/15/12, and left it in the primary for another 3 weeks or so.
After the cider was all fermented out, I racked to a secondary (FG was right around 1.000 even), and this is where it sits now. Much to my surprise the gravity sample I sipped when transferring was pretty damn tasty, not half as funky as I expected.
I'd like to bottle condition this cider, carb it up a bit, and add maybe just a slight little hint of sweetness. I'm thinking I'd either like to add some store bought juice at bottling or some brown sugar. I'm not trying to back sweeten so much, or to make anything super sweet. I'd actually rather it remain closer to the dry side of things, but just a lil sweetness to ease the tart flavors could be nice (or so SWMBO says.)
What do you guys think? How am I going to create the cider I'm envisioning? I'm kind of assuming I'll need to add some more yeast at bottling but I'm not completely sure. I'd like to get away without needing to pasteurize, but I guess I could if need be. Refrigerating the bottles in the more likely choice (again, only if absolutely necessary).
Thanks for the help!