Sour Cider?

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NeoN

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Hi guys, it was my first time making cider this past month, and I really dunno what went wrong, maybe you can help me out.

We purchased 6 gallons of organic apple cider from the store, no pasturization.
6-gallon carboy,
champagne yeast, 4 packets
yeast fermentation, couple of teaspoons,

let everything ferment, it was going like crazy, let it go for 2 weeks, cleaned out the sediment, let it ferment some more, 60 degree room temp the whole time, bubbler is working ok. Not sure where we went wrong.

please help,
 
There's a few things here, imo, that might cause a "sour" taste. First, I noticed that you didn't use any camden tablets, so even though you pitched a yeast in, there might have been a bit of wild yeasts or other bugs still in there to cause a little "wildness" which sometimes comes through as sourness. The oother one, is that your cider is very young, and green cider can taste a bit "sour" (to me at least) also if it's very dry that could do it too, and you may want to look into some of the threads around here for sweetening ciders.
 
Is it a vinegar sour? If you don't like it, you can use it to cook with.
 
If it is only 2 to 3 weeks old, it will have some pretty off taste, (kerosene, gas, white lighting, etc.) time in secondary will fix that.
If it taste like vinegar, or something very sour, then you have a problem that a long time might fix. Note I said might.
As already recommend. If it still taste too sour after two months, start using it for cooking. The next time, clean, sanitize, use camden tablets the next time for 24 hours prior to pitching the yeast.
 
I vote "just wait" unless it's a strong (acetic) sourness. A crisp tartness at the end of the sip is usual for a young cider and will mellow with some age. Even so, even if it is vinegary, just wait. Many a brew destined for the sink was saved with a little patience. If you have Acetobacter in there, I'm not saying you'll salvage it, but you might be wrong about the vinegariness. Worse comes to worst, you've got some homemade apple cider vinegar, which is not a bad thing, either.
 
I just bottled my new batch. But after 4 or 5 day i tasted one of the bottles which taste sour and smells like apple.... Where I've done wrong ? By the way it has lots of dissolved co2 after only 4 days,,, should I wait or throw all out or just use it as good apple vinegar?
 
Dry cider can be pretty sour. Can you add a splash of non fermented AJ or even cranberry juice to sweeten it back up?
 
Dry cider can be pretty sour. Can you add a splash of non fermented AJ or even cranberry juice to sweeten it back up?

Sour... or bitter? Sour suggests that the apple cider has been contaminated with acetobacter - like vinegar. Bitter simply suggests that the cider is too acidic. The first cannot be helped by adding sweetener. the second can be or it can also be helped by reducing the TA by adding something alkaline (K -carbonate for example)
 
what do you mean when you say you cleaned out the sediment? and did you use four 5g packets of yeast? because that's a lot of yeast.
 
As others have said, young, dry cider is usually pretty tart. I'm willing to bet there's nothing wrong with yours (although what a previous poster mentioned about campden tablets and wild yeast is definitely a possibility).

Apples are loaded with malic acid, but when you take a bite of a fresh apple you don't realize it because it's balanced by a lot of sugar. Once fermentation takes that sugar out of the equation, cider can be pretty sour stuff!
 

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