Cider Sweetening?

I am fairly new to brewing, and on my first batch of cider. I racked to secondary today after 4 weeks in primary. Gravity is at 1.000 down from a start of 1.070. How long should it stay in the secondary? I figured another month maybe. It tasted rather sour/bitter. I was told to add 2 tsp of citric acid to the recipe. I am worried that was too much. Is there any way to sweeten it without restarting the fermentation. I am not kegging yet so I can't use sorbate to halt fermentation. I do want it to carbonate in the bottle.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

cascadehollow said:

I am fairly new to brewing, and on my first batch of cider. I racked to secondary today after 4 weeks in primary. Gravity is at 1.000 down from a start of 1.070. How long should it stay in the secondary? I figured another month maybe. It tasted rather sour/bitter. I was told to add 2 tsp of citric acid to the recipe. I am worried that was too much. Is there any way to sweeten it without restarting the fermentation. I am not kegging yet so I can't use sorbate to halt fermentation. I do want it to carbonate in the bottle.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

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If you want to bottle carbonate, you have a couple of choices to sweeten. You could use non-fermentable sweeteners like splenda or lactose, or bottle pasteurize when the cider is carbed up enough after sweetening.

Sorbate inhibits yeast reproduction, so you could use it and then sweeten the cider and fermentation won't restart, but you can't bottle carbonate after sorbate as you need the yeast activity to carb up the cider.

Hi

I have not tried to back sweeten as we tend to prefer dry ciders, but I know it can be tricky for homebrewers, especially if you want carbonation. At 1.000 you've probably fermented out all the available sugar, but should have active yeast in suspension to do the carbonating. The easiest way to carbonate would be to force carbonate if you are set up or can access a friend with a kegging system. Then you can back sweeten to the desired amount and use sorbate to stop further fermentation and bottle. Otherwise you'll have to add a bit of extra sweetener, bottle, let condition for a guessed amount of time, then figure a way to pasteurize. I've heard of some people having success pasteurizing at home using the sanitize function on their dishwashers. Of course if it doesn't work you'll end up with bottle bombs. Another method is back sweetening with an unfermentable sugar in addition to the priming sugar.

As for the tartness being due to the acid blend, it is hard to say. Did you press your own apples or buy the juice? Using a ph test strip to figure out the levels before adding the acid blend is most useful. I'm not sure if it can be adjusted post fermentation. I've found Andrew Lea's website useful though a bit clunky to navigate:
http://www.cider.org.uk/content2.htm

Hope this helps!

Thanks Yooper.
Do you think the 2 tsp of Citric Acid per 5 gallons was too much? Should I attempt to sweeten now or will it possibly improve its taste after a month or so in secondary?

It was 5 gallons of Mott's Natural juice with maple syrup and brown sugar added. I used WLP500 trappist ale yeast.

Maybe its time to buy that starter kegging system I have had my eye on.

cascadehollow said:

Thanks Yooper.
Do you think the 2 tsp of Citric Acid per 5 gallons was too much? Should I attempt to sweeten now or will it possibly improve its taste after a month or so in secondary?

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It seems like an ok amount. It will improve with some age- often the "apple" flavor comes back after a bit of aging and the tartness fades.

Thanks for the info. Time will tell I guess