Brewing BIG Ciders

Just kinda wondering how much sugar is too much to add to cider,I have a 5 gal. keg brewing now, it took 4 gallons fresh pressed cider and 20# sugar,I then pinched lavin 1116 in. It's chugging along but I thought it would brewing like a coffee pot. whats the deal?

My guess is with 20lb of sugar in there your yeast will die in the alcohol before all the sugar gets eaten, giving you a super sugary cider.

Well, that's not really a big cider, it's a wine that will stop fermenting at about 15-18% ABV (depending on the yeast you used) and will be very, very, very sweet. Like sweet enough to hurt your teeth.

For my apple wine (about 12.5% ABV) I use about 1.25 pounds of sugar per gallon and it finishes dry. With a bit more sugar, it would finish sweet.

The yeast will be overwhelmed with alcohol poisoning before you get a drinkable product, I'm afraid.

Did you happen to take any hydrometer readings?

YooperBrew said:

Did you happen to take any hydrometer readings?

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I can see it now, the weight on the bottom of the hydrometer barely breaking the surface. Dear Lord! 20lbs in 4 gallons, my guess for a SG would be about 1.300 my hydrometer doesnt even go to 1.2. I'm a little surprised you got that much to disolve.

I'll bet if you sit down close to the carboy and be really quiet, you can hear the yeast wheezing... If it were me and I was trying to figure out what to do with this I might go ahead and start a gallon of straight apple juice with a very dry yeast, like champagne. Ferment it dry and rack it a couple of times maybe to get it clear as you can. Then use it to "back-dry" (as opposed to backsweeten) your batch of fermenting apple syrup when it finishes. Just a thought--on the other hand, wait & see...a lot of folks on here say their SWMBO's like it really sweet. You might have a batch of lady-killer on your hands

never mind. I was confused

jcobbs said:

Just a thought--on the other hand, wait & see...a lot of folks on here say their SWMBO's like it really sweet. You might have a batch of lady-killer on your hands

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Lady-killer? That much sugar I'd call it the Diabetic's Nightmare.

Most likely you will die from CO2 poisoning with activity like that. Leave me your cider and brewing equipment in your will please.

I like my cider kinda sweet, **** I like my beer kinda sweet also,belgium triple,strong imperial stoutsand most of my buddies like em too. What I was trying to do with this cider was trying to get more of a brandy feeling, I've got a blueberry cyser going and its got around 4# of honey and sugar per gallon its SSG was 1.165,last check it was at 1.098 and it had a brandy taste still too sweet, oh that has lavin 1118 yeast

lalvin 1118 has an ABV tolerance of 18%. That's around 1.140 for an OG. You started at double that, so you'll probably end up around 18% with 35 Brix residual sugar. For a comparison, Kool-Aid is about 8 Brix and a sweet wine will be 1-2.

You are seeing the impact of high osmotic pressure. The yeast are having an extremely difficult time drawing sugar into the cells to process it. The fermentation might take years and I'm not being sarcastic. I would get 4-5 more gallons of cider and dilute. When it is done, back-sweeten to taste.

david_42 said:

lalvin 1118 has an ABV tolerance of 18%. That's around 1.140 for an OG. You started at double that, so you'll probably end up around 18% with 35 Brix residual sugar. For a comparison, Kool-Aid is about 8 Brix and a sweet wine will be 1-2.

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hmmm, so could you water it down and make some pretty wicked kool-aid punch type stuff?

In the future, I think back-sweetening your cider is going to be the way to go. Splenda does it well. Going about it this way, all you're doing is kicking your yeast in the balls.

WOW and I think I am out there sometimes. But i never thought of using 20lb of sugar in a batch of cider. that is enought to give some one seizures and definitely have sugar plumbs dancing around in your head.

I would thin the mix on that one. even if you split what you have and use half in one carboy and half in another and add freah cider to fill. you would still have 10# of sugar per carboy.

I am instrested to see how it turns out.

I've read in a couple of threads of guys using lavin 1116 and reaching abv of 25%,that is kinda what I'm trying. Oh yea,have you ever heard of wild yeast taking over 1118 yeast,my cherry cider stopped brewing at 1.010,and I like it, slighty sweet but has a punch, but that is where my wild yeast takes it also.

miloa said:

I've read in a couple of threads of guys using lavin 1116 and reaching abv of 25%,that is kinda what I'm trying. Oh yea,have you ever heard of wild yeast taking over 1118 yeast,my cherry cider stopped brewing at 1.010,and I like it, slighty sweet but has a punch, but that is where my wild yeast takes it also.

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I don't believe that 1116 or 1118 will ever go much above 18%. I've never heard a reliable source say that it does, and the even the manufacturer states that 18% is the max. I think even 18% is pushing it, and that would only be with incremental feedings, yeast nutrient, etc. You could probably push it that high by starting smaller, and adding sugar every 3 days. Adding 20 pounds at once will have stressed the yeast, and not give the "babying" that a super high gravity fermenter needs.

Wild yeast will easily infect any unprotected wine or cider. It might not "take over", but without campden or an airlock it's likely to be contaminated with wild yeast.

I actually like the cider made with wild yeast better that is why I don't kill it with camden tabs, I added the lavin 1116 just trying to get the abv higher,should I add more yeast? small doses of nutrient and booster? or is there another type of yeast I could try?

miloa said:

I actually like the cider made with wild yeast better that is why I don't kill it with camden tabs, I added the lavin 1116 just trying to get the abv higher,should I add more yeast? small doses of nutrient and booster? or is there another type of yeast I could try?

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A wild yeast will definitely NOT go over 18%, or even nearly that high, so for a higher ABV, you'd want the 1116 or 1118. Even so, this cider will not ferment as far as you'd probably like. The yeast will be very stressed by the time it reaches 12-14% due to the high sugar content, and the inhospitable environment. More yeast won't help, I'm afraid.

What kind of yeast do brewers use when they make huge beers, some 20%-25%?

My blueberry cyser has a honey sugar ratio of 4# per gallon it started at 1.165 and is now 1.088. Each week it drops about .010, I'd like to get to about 1.010, also where I want my Big Cider to finish>

I suspect that the brewers who are getting 20-25%ABV are doing an eisbock thing, where they're fermenting to 18% or so and then freezing to remove some of the water, thus condensing what they got. The challenge is that this also condenses the hop oils and melanoidins, thus throwing things out of balance. Any off tastes will only be magnified by such a process. But that's just speculation.

It sounds like you're trying it the wrong way, and you're gonna end up with just a boozy syrup that will be undrinkable.

The type of beer I'm talking about is like Sam Adams utopious a 25% vintage ale,I was told by a brewer I know who brews a vintage ale of 20% and a imperial stout at 22% that they use a special yeast,then again they might be the only ones to have it.

Getting high ABVs requires stepped ferments, tightly controlled temperatures, in addition to special yeasts. Nothing exists that can handle the sugar levels you have, not even a turbo yeast or WLP099.

miloa said:

My blueberry cyser has a honey sugar ratio of 4# per gallon it started at 1.165 and is now 1.088. Each week it drops about .010, I'd like to get to about 1.010, also where I want my Big Cider to finish>

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Sorry to tell you this, but it won't happen. Won't get much lower than it is right now, as a matter of fact. It'll stop pretty soon, probably by about 1.050 for that cyser.

As we've been saying, pushing yeast past it's alcohol tolerance isn't a matter of just dumping in sugar and wine yeast and waiting. It takes incremental feedings (not dumping 20# in at once), proper aeration, proper nutrients, etc.

I just brewed a cider with nothing but juice that came to an ABV of around 9, according to my vinometer. I used Ambrosia, a locally discovered variety that is sweet as sweet gets, plus a lot of over-ripe galas and fujis, as well as everything else in my boss's orchard. I took two separate readings to make sure. I messed up and counted US gallons at the start, fermented in an oversized bucket and didn't notice I was a little shy. So I made a generous juice top-up in secondary with newly pressed juice. My initial gravity reading was sketchy, so I just assumed it would come out to around 7%, considering the sweetness of the apples.

I think this is about as big as a fully natural cider is going to get. And I even racked once and threw away a lot of lees, topping up with water.

If my ferments stop I was thinking about pitching some Eau de vie yeast, I just put some nutrients and energizer and it is going pretty good again. I've decided to give these ciders all the time they need but alot of my regular ciders are finishing up now. I still dont know why my lavin 1118 and 1116 slowed down so soon.

It's way better to feed the ferment with sugar and oxygen for the first half of fermentation rather than all at once. Even if you were able to hit 1.016, it would taste like rocket fuel.

Nothing wrong with rocket fuel if it tastes good, the whole idea here is to find the abv that I can achieve with out to many problems. 10-15% is pretty easy I want to get over 20%

Miloa, it seems like what people are saying in this thread isn't really getting though to you. You're not going to get over 20% with yeast that exists on this planet without (1) developing a proprietary yeast of your own, (2) going through a freezing/eisbock process, (3) distilling, or (4) maybe, MAYBE babying your yeast to a ridiculous degree.

If you can do it, great, but those are your options, and I don't think (4) is a realistic one. If you want to be cranking out beverages with such a high alcohol content, you want to get into distilling.

Experiment.

I've heard of champagne yeasts never conking out until they get to higher than 18, but it's rare. Try incrimentally adding more and more must, the way I've heard that some mead makers will make very big or sweet show meads. Try using nutrients and aerating the crap out of it at the beginning. Read yeast data from the yeast companies and try to choose a good yeast. Lalvin and Wyeast have information on all their strains -somewhere- on the internet.

An experiment is always worth it, as long as it's not too big an experiment. Then, if you get up to a 20% abv, post it to silence the skeptics who are too timid to try the experiment. I don't think it's completely unrealistic, but probably rare and difficult to duplicate once it happens. At the very worst, you'll have an apple wine that sits at 17% with a sweet finish.

Now that's the attitude I'm talking about, to admit defeat before trying is'nt in my blood. I've gone online and my options for a different yeast are many White labs and Wyeast both make yeasts that can break 25%, also there other companies out there who make even bigger yeasts. Maybe I do have a head like a brick, but making cider(really apple wine) is pretty cheap and its is funnnnn man. Both of my big ciders are chugging along ok for now, I believe my other ciders stopped at 1.012 for lack of nutrients I dont see why lavin 1118 or 1116 would stop other wise.

I'm all for experimentation, I'm just saying that you're getting into a pretty extreme realm of brewing at this point. (Is it called brewing if it's a cider? Anyway...). If you want to experiment down this path, I think it's worth doing a fair bit of reading about babying your yeast, instead of just loading it up with 20# of sugar out of the gate.

Next year I'm going to have all the free cider I want to experiment with, so if this fails this year I wont mess with it next year,but if it does,I'll try both ways next year and see if one is better or easier.

Yeah, I get lots of free or ridiculously cheap fermentables myself. That's why I'm always pro-experimentation!

Some people have to pay for their apples, though. Where I live, people have to get rid of a lot of them for free every year, because they can't sell them all!

Yes the only thing better than cheap fruit is freeee.I've got access to alot of different fruit like white peaches,yellow raspberries.sweet and sour cherries,pears,plums and strawberries. I want to do something with them all! not sure what yet.Hoping to turn them to wine and then mix with hard cider for flavoring. Bythe way do all fruits have wild yeast like apples?

Yeast will live where there is fruit for sure, but some of the yeasts living on the fruits might not be very... nice. Most fruits have wiled yeasts growing on them. Apples apparently can have four or five different species on them. I read a list of them somewhere once. Not one of them was s. cerevisiae, if I remember right. From what I understand, brettanomyces is pretty ubiquitous everywhere.

A good friend of mine for her first batch of raspberry wine fluked out and didn't use yeast at all though, had a good fermentation and had it taste great. She didn't know what she was doing back then, and wonders to this day why it turned out so good.

I've had great luck with wild yeast and my ciders although the are more like wine,the wild yeast in my area takes cider to 10or 11% and tastes great even without aging.

I brewed one of my last ciders on 4 Sep 2009. I used 4.5 gal AJ, 4 lbs, Corn Sugar, 2 lbs Dark Brown Sugar, and 3 lbs Honey. My OG was 1.126.

I used Lalvin K1-V1116 yeast. Depending on where you read it, this yeast is good to either 16 or 20%.

At present my cider is 16.013% ABV. I don't think it's going any further.

16% doesnt sound to bad what it taste like? I've been reading about distilliers yeast and as long as it dont give it a bad taste it could work.

Miloa,
You need to stop thinking only in terms of % ABV. Given an acceptable environment, yeast will consume the sugar available up to their tolerance level. Saying natural yeast takes it to 10-11% doesn't mean much without the final gravity. Without FG, we don't know if it really did conk out at 11%, or if that's just the potential of the cider you had to begin with.

Flavor of a product has a lot more to do with the overall ingredients and the residual components left after fermentation, than it does on just the yeast.

Take Homebrewer_99's recipe (which sounds delicious by the way and I'm going to try it). The corn sugar provides an alcohol boost, but doesn't provide anything in the way of flavor of the final product, nothing except burn.
The molasses in the dark brown sugar and the honey lend a carmel-like and honey flavor and scent. With a SG of 1.126 at the beginning of September, and currently just over 16%, we can calculate that the gravity is probably down between 1.004 and 1.005. With K1-V1116, thats doing well at almost 97% attenuation, but at only 3 months old, it may not be entirely done yet.

And while the residual sugars and flavorings from the mix of ingredients will help make this drinkable younger, at 16% it'll probably still be a year for the burn to mellow and all the flavor profiles to meld. My guess, at x-mas 2010, this will be putting all Homebrewer_99's houseguests UNDER the tree!

With your 20# of sugar you're looking at close to 35% potential. Nothing out there will ferment that out. Even distillers yeast drops out at 23%, that's why they distill to reach the higher ABV content.

My first batch of cider just finished, SG of 1.095, FG 1.010, just a touch sweet but very drinkable,as we found out last night. We got to sampling it,and boy it packs a punch around 11% but i used 1118 yeast I expected to go lower,cant say as I'm unhappy just curious. Managed to put the keg back together and now ON TAP, telling ya kegs are the way to go.The more you tear em apart and put them together the easier it is.