Making Apple Juice less fermentable

In thinking about making ciders, I'm thinking I want something semi-sweet. I'm a bottle conditioner, so I can't have a sweet carbonated cider.

The issue is that apple juice is very fermentable. Would it be possible to make it less fermentable? I know extended boiling of wort can carmelize the wort- would this apply to apple juice?

At the very least, boiling the juice would reduce the liquid, and make for a higher OG.

Any thoughts or experience with this?

You could let it ferment out and add some potassium sorbate to retard further fermentation then add straight frozen concentrate AJ (no added water) to get the flavor sweet again, or use some Splenda.

I've done both at the same time and was pleasantly surprised.

I know that route, but am wondering if it's possible to convert some of the sugars in apple juice into unfermentable sugars.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and show my inexperience but.....

Instead of boiling your whole wort what about the idea of taking a smaller quantity of good quality juice say maybe >1 ga, depending on your batch size, and throwing it on the stove and very slowly reduce it to the point where you have a syrup. At that point kill the heat and let it cool and finish reducing. Once its cool return it to the medium/medium high heat and highly carmelize it much like you would a roux.

You could then take that syrup after it has cooled a second time and blend it cold into your cider wort and pitch your yeast. The idea being that the smaller amount of syrup would provide unfermentable sugars without you having to boil your entire "wort" and hopefully minimize the amount of hazing in the final beverage.

**Note I don't know how well this would work, I'm going on the premise that some carmelized sugars may be less fermentable and would contribute to the overall sweetness and mouth feel of the final beverage. Please feel free to correct me if I'm heading towards disaster with this idea.

think this is what you looking for

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/unfermentable-sugars-47805/

I've used malto dextrine, and it was ok seems like more body than sweetness, not sure about lactose though. I've heard some people have good luck with it.

It wont work, carmlized sugar is not that sweet anyway. and you cant make the mono sugars poly again and even if you could thay dont taste that sweet eather.
its the big sugars that are unfermentable not the little ones.

why not just make some wort with a hot mash (unfermentable sugars) and then add concentrate AJ too the small amount of wort and the add that to your apple juice.

Thanks for the correction Clayton. If I'm not mistaken isn't what you're talking about basically what Brandon is doing with his graff receipe?

Well, the problem with the sugars in apple juice is that they are simple (and therefore very fermentable) from the get go. The organism that is the apple tree spent a lot of it's energy breaking down the starches in the fruit into sugars in the ripening process. Although caramelization can cause some sugars to become unfermentable (assuming that's what happens to crystal malt), it also changes them completely, flavourwise. I've made syrup out of apple juice before, and boy is it ever tasty, but to cook it to the point of a full caramelization would make some pretty bitter stuff, I imagine. Maybe doing that, as was mentioned above, would give something unique, but also probably something like a dark, stout-like cider. Moreover, from what I understand, caramelization of some sugars actually breaks them down into simpler (and therefore even more fermentable) sugars.

It's just damn near impossible to make a bottle-conditioned sweet cider of higher ABV outside of pasteurizing the bottles, which can be dangerous to do nonetheless. Myself, I like my cider really dry, but I do enjoy a good sweeter cider, so I'll have no problem putting aside some dough for kegging gear. It's really the only practical option.

boiling the juice is a bad idea. (or so I have heard). Some people say it gives the cider a cooked juice taste, also it will set the pectins and make it difficult to clear.

I would say that you should change your yeast.

I had been making most of my cider with Montrachet yeast like in EdWort's apfelwein recipe. It always fermented out dry as can be (0.994-0.998 FG). This last time, I made a simple common cider with the same grocery store juice but pitched Nottingham into it. It fermented down to 1.006 FG which left a very nice semi-sweet, Woodchuck-like quality to it. So my first recommendation is to try a new yeast strain that ferments out less.

mkling said:

I would say that you should change your yeast.

I had been making most of my cider with Montrachet yeast like in EdWort's apfelwein recipe. It always fermented out dry as can be (0.994-0.998 FG). This last time, I made a simple common cider with the same grocery store juice but pitched Nottingham into it. It fermented down to 1.006 FG which left a very nice semi-sweet, Woodchuck-like quality to it. So my first recommendation is to try a new yeast strain that ferments out less.

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i don't get how you have nottingham stop at 1.006. I use nottingham almost exclusively for cider and i've always had my FG be less than .998 (OG ranging from 1.050-1.075)

BaronIV said:

i don't get how you have nottingham stop at 1.006. I use nottingham almost exclusively for cider and i've always had my FG be less than .998 (OG ranging from 1.050-1.075)

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I certainly expected to go lower than 1.006 & was very surprised that it stopped there. My OG for this was 1.046 -- just straight grocery store apple juice with nothing but ascorbic acid. In all other ways except for yeast strain, this batch was similar to other batches I've made that attenuated more fully, so I assumed it must be the yeast strain. Could be something else, I guess. Luckily I keg so I didn't have to worry about bottle bombs. . .

I would let it ferment out then stabilize and back sweeten, although this will only work if you're force carbonating. Alternatively, you can let it ferment out and use splenda to sweeten since it is not fermentable.

Okay, more as an experiment than anything else, here's what I'm planning for tomorrow-

Buy 192 oz of Tree Top Juice (2 96oz bottles for $4 at Sam's Club).

Reduce 1 gallon to 1/2 gallon. Add to un-reduced juice. This should add up to a gallon of must at about 1.060 or so. I'm expecting some pectin haze, and a darker cider in general. I'm interested in what this will make.

I tried caramelizing some concentrate for this exact reason, it is currently on it's 6th week in the bottle. It is hazy with a very odd wheat kind of off flavor. It was 5 gallons of store bought juice with 2 frozen concentrates that I tried to caramelize. The concentrate reduced to almost half before I noticed what looked something like caramelizing. The off flavor is so strong, I currently consider the cider undrinkable.

It might be contaminated, but I doubt it. I am pretty thorough with the PBW followed by Starsan. All of my other ciders/graffs with store bought juice have turned out so delicious that I have a hard time keeping enough in the fridge.

Drinking this right now... I definitely am getting the cooked flavor. It's a very familiar taste that I can't put my finger on, and have been sipping very slowly, unsure if I love it or am going to pour it down the drain.

It ended up at 1.008, so it isn't as dry as other ciders I have made.

Why don't you just dilute with water?

EDIT: This is my lesson for only reading the beginning of the thread. I hope it turned out good, I say drink it!

You can freeze concentrate the juice. I know of at least a couple commercial cideries that do that. It wont change the nature of the sugars, but if you use an ale or wheat yeast with low ABV tolerance, you will have residual sugar. The trick is to bottle at the right time, because once the yeast is tuckered out there is no priming it.

With regular juice, you can bottle sweet, let carb and pasteurize. If you have access to good unpasteurized organic (low nitrogen fertilizer) juice then you can also use nitrogen reduction to bottle carb sweet cider, but this takes a lot of practice.

The traditional way to make sweet carbonated cider is something called Cuivage by the French or Keeving by English cider makers.

The technique is based on removing some of the nitrogen content which stops the yeast before it has used up all the sugars as it doesn't have sufficient nutrients to continue.

http://www.lambournvalleycider.co.uk/ferment.htm

Keeving is difficult and time consuming, but you can accomplish the same thing by using organic (low or no nitrogen fertilizer) apples and a yeast that uses a lot of nitrogen (most wheat yeasts).

Most commercial juice is no good for this because the apples have been pumped up with lots of fertilizer to get the juice yields up, however many of the smaller and mid sized orchards have been focusing on juice quality in order to compete with the larger orchards and the Chinese. The difference between good fresh pressed juice and the stuff you get at the supermarket is like the difference between going all grain vs a poor quality malt extract for beer - its not worth the trouble of making if you start with crap ingredients. A decent list of orchards can be found here:

http://www.allaboutapples.com/orchard/index.htm

use Campden tablets (metabisulfite)

figure out the residual sugar you want and stop the fermentation where you want or add it at the end of fermentation and back sweeten with sugar and force carbonate

IMHO, if you ferment to dryness and then backsweeten, you are missing the whole point of making cider. You might as well make vodka coolers. Or if you just want to ferment something, make a cheap sugar wash and flavor that.

This is something I've wondered about since making a few batches of wine and cider. Most people I've talked to are wine makers and the norm is to go dry and backsweeten, but the best batch of wine I've made and most flavorful has been a blueberry wine that I basically set with such a high OG that by the time the yeast died it would have a semi sweet finish, also about 15%. The cider and wine that I have backsweetened, they don't have the fruit flavor to it, and I've heard suggestions of letting is sit on stabilized fruit, but it seems like added work to bring back something it had originally. I guess by going dry and then sweetening, you take the guess work out of residual sugar and have more definite terms to work with?

True, by going dry and then back sweetening there is less guess work - but this comes at the expense of the original flavor that is in the fruit.

It would be like making a great all grain wort, then fermenting it out with turbo yeast until it is thin and watery and then trying to get back some semblance of taste by adding sugar or DME. It would probably be drinkable but no self respecting brewer would do this.

I know several small scale commercial winemakers and none of them backsweeten unless they screw up a batch by accident and have to do a salvage job.

Some large scale "cider" makers do backsweeten, but I would not really call this cider, more like apple flavor alcopop.

Cidermaking has elements of beer and wine making, but it is its own process. Making a really good cider requires about the same effort as all grain, except for beer most of the real work comes before the yeast is pitched. For cider the work comes afterwards.

be a purest if you want but thats the two ways it's done both are tasty ...IMO

I think traditional "real" ciders are dry