Fooling Around With Cider

So maybe I've been bitten by the brewing bug, but I thought I'd take a stab at an "ancient" cider. Basically I had a gallon of cider lying around the kitchen, and since it will be a few weeks til I have the funds to start another beer brew, and my primary is only 2 days in to fermentation of beer, I wanted to try something.

I know this may fail miserably, but I'm willing to give it a try and if it stinks then I'm out a 4 dollar gallon of cider.

Using Fleishman's Dry Bread Yeast (not quickrise).
2/3 gallon cider.
Brown Sugar

Happily when I ordered my brewing kit, they sent me a 1 gal glass carboy stopper in place of one of my better bottle stoppers. Popped that baby on top of the cider jug with an airlock. We'll see what happens.

Did you check for preservatives? If it says Potassium Sorbate or Potassium Benzoate on the ingredients than the cider will not be impressed by your feable attemts to ferment it. If not, you should be fine.

Yeah. It does have Potassium Sorbate, which one of the threads suggested can be overcome. Like I said, I don't have much to lose by trying it. If that doesn't work there is a cider mill nearby that I'm going to call and get some unpasteurized, unpreserved cider and repeat the process, using bread yeast again (and probably freezing some more to use when I get some cider yeast).

You can overcome potassium sorbate, but not by just pouring yeast into the cider. You have to get a bunch of yeast going separately (like in a batch of sugar water), then add that yeast to the sorbated cider. Sorbate will prevent the yeast from reproducing, so it will take forever to ferment. If you make a big batch of yeast before adding that to the cider, it will ferment out.

Hopefully your yeast will kick the potassium sorbate's bum, because the batch I just bottled(yesterday) is that exact recipe. Same yeast, brown sugar, and cider. Mine didn't have preservatives in it thankfully but I wish you the best of luck. I let mine go dry, and it has a very nice aroma to it, I bottled some still and dry, and some with some AJ concentrate to back sweeten and prime. Overall it is simple, cheap, and delicious.

I started a tablespoon of the yeast in water in 1.5 cups of warm water and a half cup dissolved brown sugar.

Had a Krausen going all day today on the top of it.

If it stalls I'm going to make another starter, let it propagate longer, then repitch.

Just checked on my "Ancient" Cider and I'm getting bubbles though the airlock. Guess the second yeast starter I made isn't necessary.

Update, if anyone cares. Pitched the second yeast starter just for the hell of it yesterday. Airlock still bubbling.

It sounds like you might have the beginnings of a good apple jack this winter. Get some oak cubes and a mason jar, and find a good place to hide it from yourself until next winter.

You really think it will need to age a year?

Measured OG was 1.044.
Just measured FG to see how far it's gone along fermenting. 1.004. So about 5.3% after 3 days?

Tasted my hydrometer sample. Tastes good, slight nose of bread, but its not apparent in the taste. Fining with gelatin, then going to bottle, and eventually stove top pasteurize to kill any yeasties.

I'm in the same boat: got 5 gal of cider at a local orchard and pitched my yeast before I noticed it had been treated with sodium benzoate. Bloody hell. 4 days now, and not a bubble. I pitched straight from a Wyeast smack-pack without giving it much time to get going. I guess I may as well try again, with a fresh starter. What else am I going to do with 5 gals of cider boosted with 2.5 lbs of honey, after all? Drat and double drat.

CorgiBrew said:

I'm in the same boat: got 5 gal of cider at a local orchard and pitched my yeast before I noticed it had been treated with sodium benzoate. Bloody hell. 4 days now, and not a bubble. I pitched straight from a Wyeast smack-pack without giving it much time to get going. I guess I may as well try again, with a fresh starter. What else am I going to do with 5 gals of cider boosted with 2.5 lbs of honey, after all? Drat and double drat.

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Sodium benzoate is some nasty stuff, it should have been banned years ago. I'm surprised your local orchard still uses it, most of ours have gone UV.

I did find a page about fermenting around it, http://www.miiamonthly.com/2010/01/...-cider-and-the-problems-with-sodium-benzoate/

She pitched yeast 3 times including one big starter and it still took 3-4 months just to ferment.

Thanks for the link. This orchard "flash pasteurizes" in addition to the SB. Don't know what they're so damned worried about. My fault, I guess, for not paying attention. I'm going to repitch, for what its worth, but will start a new batch with real cider this weekend.

HerotBrewer said:

Tasted my hydrometer sample. Tastes good, slight nose of bread, but its not apparent in the taste. Fining with gelatin, then going to bottle, and eventually stove top pasteurize to kill any yeasties.

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Let me know if you are successful bottle conditioning this batch. I'm going down the same road (a week or two behind you) and would be interested to know if the sodium benzoate has any impact on conditioning. Good luck!

Actually it was tasty and there was only a gallon so I drank it.

HerotBrewer said:

Actually it was tasty and there was only a gallon so I drank it.

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Like they say, when in doubt, drink it up! I pitched 4 packets of Red Star champagne last night (my skeptical LHBS calls what I am doing a "science experiment" and recommended I use the cheapest yeast possible). Some signs of weak activity this morning, so we will see....

I kow you wanted an ancient cider but why bread yeast? Yeech. I would have left it open to wild yeast or grabbed a bunch or organic raisins and tossed them in.

When I made that post on miiamonthly.com about sodium benzoate in cider, it was the culmination of a lot of frustration in trying to get that treated cider to ferment. I had already spent close to $80 on cider, so I wasn’t about to pour it down the drain. Hence why I went forward with trying to get apple cider to ferment out at all costs. But yes, I’m evidence that you can get apple cider treated with sodium benzoate to ferment out. It just takes a long time (at least 4 months, but closer to 6-12 months to get the cider to clarify) and a lot of yeast to get the job done.

Oh and FYI, I’m a guy not a gal.

RugenBrau said:

I kow you wanted an ancient cider but why bread yeast? Yeech. I would have left it open to wild yeast or grabbed a bunch or organic raisins and tossed them in.

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If it works for JAOM, I thought it would work for cider. And it fermented down to a tasty, drinkable cider with at least 5% ABV in about 4 days, with no bready taste to it, so I think it turned out fine. I only called it Ancient after the JAOM mead recipe.

Is it me, or does anyone else think this thread title should have been "Fooling Around In Cider"?