Slowing fermentation down

My cider is fermenting too quickly for my liking. The SG is already down to 1.02 and do not want it to go much lower. I have racked it off twice already and left some lees behind but there still seems to be plenty of sediment in the juice so it is still fermenting quickly.

Will adding campden tablets kill the wild yeast and stop it in its tracks?
I cannot cold rack because this is a 6 gallon batch. Thanks

campden alone wont stop it. if you add campden and then add sulfate a couple hours later, that works, but it leaves a faint medicinal/vanilla sort of taste that I dont like. If you sulfate without the campden first, it tastes horrible.

What kind of yeast? If its an ale or wheat yeast, you can always cold crash in a keg bucket, with a couple bags of ice

CvilleKevin said:

campden alone wont stop it. if you add campden and then add sulfate a couple hours later, that works, but it leaves a faint medicinal/vanilla sort of taste that I dont like. If you sulfate without the campden first, it tastes horrible.

What kind of yeast? If its an ale or wheat yeast, you can always cold crash in a keg bucket, with a couple bags of ice

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I think we're talking about sorbate here, not sulfate.

Sorbate and campden together are good at inhibiting refermentation, but not at stopping an active fermentation. Stopping an active fermentation with a wine yeast is like trying to stop a freight train.

I think we're talking about sorbate here, not sulfate.

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Right - I meant to say sorbate. I've used it with ale yeasts and with wild yeast to stop fermentation (with and without adding k-meta first). It was very effective, but I did not like the taste at all.

CvilleKevin said:

Right - I meant to say sorbate. I've used it with ale yeasts and with wild yeast to stop fermentation (with and without adding k-meta first). It was very effective, but I did not like the taste at all.

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It does have a taste, and I'm not a fan either.

I think your best bet is to cold crash it somehow.... This slows the yeast *Way* down

*Then* rack it off and sorbate it...

How about sitting your carboy in an appropriately sized trash can and dumping ice and water all around it..... It would probably take a couple bags of ice and have to sit over night, but it would do the trick -- Clears it out real nice at the same time...

Or.. you could rack off a small volume of it -- like a gallon or so -- and try out Keeving...

Thanks

John

It's wild yeast. I have tried keeving but it did not work - https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/keeving-194360/
For future reference then, should I add a campden at the start to kill off the wild yeast and then add some of my own yeast so I can control the fermentation?

You dont need to kill the wild yeast with campden. Any yeast you add will quickly take over. The only way I know of to manage a wild yeast ferment is to keep it cool - as in 60 degrees F or less, so that the ferment goes real slow and runs out of nitrogen before it runs out of sugar.

I have now moved it outside where the temperature at night drops to about 50 at night in an effort to slow it down

Hey Wild, you can also put the fermenter in a big cooler or rubbermaid container, with water and a big 2 liter soda bottle with frozen water in it - swap out the frozen soda bottle twice a day and you'll get your fermentation down to a more consistent level.