Safe Bottling

Hello All!

My roommates and I have a batch of cider in carboy, hopefully fermenting. We added champage yeast, as suggested to us by the only book we could find on cider making.

Our original specific gravity was just about 1.060. My roommates are quite experienced homebrewers. They said that they normally bottle their beer when the specific gravity is about 1.01. They add a little bit of sugar to the batch and then it carbonates in the bottles.

Here's where I would appreciate advice: I have read on this site that cider will ferment more than beer will, and so it may not be safe to put it in the bottles at a specific gravity of 1.01.

-When is it safe to bottle our cider?

-If we cannot carbonate it in bottles, do we have another option? (We definitely prefer that it be carbonated!)

-Will we need to add sugar at any stage?

Thanks!

Cider will probably go to .990 or so, so yes putting it into bottles at 1.010 will create bottle bombs.

When the cider is finished, the SG readings will be stable over the course of a week and no longer drop. The cider will clear quite a bit, and you can bottle then. To carbonate, you add 5 ounces (by weight) of priming sugar dissolved in 2 cups of water and put that into a bottling bucket and then rack the cider into it. It'll take about 2-3 weeks to carb up.

OK! Thanks so much for the quick response.

My carboy is not full. I have only 4 gallons of cider, rather than the normal 5G batch. Do I still use 5 oz of sugar or just 4?

Do you have a keg? In that case you can cold crash it while it still has some residual sugar and force carbonate with the keg. although champagne yeast can be tough to crash. ale yeast is a lot easier

how much sugar per gallon would you suggest to carbonate?

If you don't want it to be completely dry (ferment out completely as Yooper suggested), you can follow Kevin's suggestion of crashing and kegging or you can pasteurize it on the stove top after bottling it https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/

Tinga said:

how much sugar per gallon would you suggest to carbonate?

Click to expand...

four to five ounces of corn sugar (priming sugar) per five gallons is what I usually do

Thanks all!

I do not have a keg. Not ready for that investment yet. I think I'll go the simpler route and let it ferment out.