Sweet Woodchuck clone without back sweetening or kegging

This may not taste exactly like Woodchuck, but I had a draft cider from Trader Joe’s the other day and they taste identical. I first have to thank this forum and CvileKevin for his Results from juice, yeast and sugar experiments, and sharing his success with Nottingham Yeast.

My goal was to create a strong sweet hard cider without waiting for months, without back sweetening, without kegging, and without using ingredients that are expensive or seasonal. These are the same discussions that take place daily on this thread. If you are looking for an easy to drink semi-sweet cider that most people will love, this simple recipe is for you. There are 3 key ingredients, Nottingham Ale Yeast, dark brown sugar, and frozen apple juice concentrate without sulfites. That’s right, frozen apple juice, not expensive fresh cider. I guess you could use bottled apple juice, but the frozen concentrate works great, and I added one more can then needed to keep the apple flavor.

Woodchuck Clone 5 Gallon Batch S.G. 1.070

14 cans “Old Orchard” frozen concentrate apple juice or any other juice without sulfites
Water to reach the 5-gallon mark
2 lbs. dark brown sugar
Nottingham Ale Yeast
Priming sugar (3/4 cup corn sugar)

Directions:
Boil 2 lbs of dark brown sugar in some water.
Prepare yeast by following the directions on the packet
Pour 14 cans of thawed apple juice concentrate into primary fermenter (fill each container with warm water and pour back into fermenter to get all of the concentrate from the side of the can)
Add brown sugar and water to reach the 5-gallon mark
Stir vigorously
Add yeast

Check gravity daily after 3 days. Fermentation should start the next day. About 5-7 days when it reaches 1.012 {correction at first I said 1.020, but that was wrong} or lower (the lower the number the dryer it will taste) rack it into the secondary fermenter and leave for at least 2 weeks. This will stop the fermentation and prevent it from becoming bone dry like wine or champagne yeast will do.

After 2 weeks, boil priming sugar in one cup of water and pour into a bottling bucket. Rack the cider into the bottling bucket (some people say you don’t stir) then bottle and cap. Wait 2 weeks (if you can) to drink.

My cider did have a strong yeast smell that I assume will go away, but the taste is phenomenal.

I would love to hear your comments or questions. I also made a 6 gallon batch using Wal-Mart’s brand of apple juice concentrate and light brown sugar. I’ll let you know how it turned out, but it fermented a lot slower.

What kind of dark brown sugar are you using? Is it the normal stuff from the grocery store?

I doubt that that you are going to stop fermentation if you rack off at 1.020.
I have tried to stop fermentation by cold crashing at that SG and have only been successful once. If you bottle at 1.020 and leave it where it is warm you will have some bottle bombs.

Thats what i was wondering...no issues with bombs?!

i agree. These things will be grenades.
Maybe you can pasteurize them after they are the way you want. If you cold crash and its successful you will not get any fizz

Gotta throw in an x5.. very difficult to get that SG to hold just with racking, even with multiple crashes and racking

Dump some campden tablets in there if you want to stop fermentation at 1.020

So... if you stop the yeast it's not going to carb. And if you carb it will eat all the sugar and explode. I don't see how you could have it both carbed and sweet with this method.

mr tripp...that isn't a horrible recipe..but please don't post information on fermentation stopping, when you have newbies that will rely on that info and think it is correct. This statement in your recipe is simply untrue. Fermentation will NOT stop just because you racked it into the secondary. If you didn't cold crash or sorbate and bisulphite..fermentation WILL keep happening in the secondary and will keep happening when you add priming sugar, and then your bottles will explode and you will have a mess. This is a fact, not an opinion. Nottingham yeast WILL take the fermentation well past 1.020.

JGDrng said:

What kind of dark brown sugar are you using? Is it the normal stuff from the grocery store?

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Yes, I used normal dark brown sugar from the grocery store. I purchased the frozen concentrates at the same place I purchased the sugar.

flyweed said:

Fermentation will NOT stop just because you racked it into the secondary. If you didn't cold crash or sorbate and bisulphite..fermentation WILL keep happening in the secondary and will keep happening when you add priming sugar, and then your bottles will explode and you will have a mess. This is a fact, not an opinion. Nottingham yeast WILL take the fermentation well past 1.020.

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Hmm. I'm not disagreeing with you, I am also a newbie. This is what I learned from another post:

Nottingham – This has been my favorite yeast for several years. It works well for sweet ciders and cysers with pasteurized juice, although not so well for unpasteurized cyser. It cold crashes well with any juice. With just juice, no sugar, and cold crash around 1.004, it is outstanding. If you use sugar and bump sg up to at least 1.060, then you can stop fermentation with pasteurized juice by racking. You have to do either rack or cold crash to keep it from drying out all the way, as it tends to strip out the flavor if it goes all the way dry.

I’m just curious, has anyone ever used Nottingham yeast and raised the SG, then racked and had bottle bombs?

How long does it take for bottle bombs?

could take a month or so. I did a experiment a while back just to see one explode. I put a over primed bottle in a rubber maid. It blew the lid off the box and still made a mess. Glass everywhere. Took about a month... but it depends. It could take a while. Not worth the risk though. If you like it and its carbed well stick them all in the fridge.
If the yeast is active enough to eat away at the priming sugar its active enough to eat away at the other stuff too.

Mrtripp
I,ve read that last post in Kevins sticky and it seems to me that he has had a lot of luck(probably skill) at cold crashing at higher #'s . I've never been able to replicate it at the higher #'s. I can't believe that racking at 1.020 will be safe. You might have some luck if you were to cold crash and then rack but I never did. If you do it I would keep it very cold and drink it fast!

agreed with Rugen...if you were to try this method..I would most certainly cold crash first, and then rack it to a secondary, then let it sit at about 34F for 2-3 days..and then keg or bottle. I would then keep the keg or bottles cold (read: below 40F)

Dan

You can stop Nottingham just by racking. The same is also true of S04 and 3068. I dont know how reliable this will be at 1.020. I've stopped 3068 at sgs up to 1.025 with no problem, but I usually stop the ale yeasts around 1.010 or lower.

This may be a function of the juice you use, as well as the yeast. The orchard where I get my juice doesnt use nitrogen fertilizers on their mature trees, so the juice is low in nutrients, I suspect that ale and wheat yeasts use more nitrogen than wine and champagne yeasts. Racking the cider leaves most of the nutrient behind as well as nearly all of the yeast, so that fermentation stops. I'm not sure how well this would work with store bought juice. A lot of commercial growers use nitrogen to pump their juice yields up and I suspect that the resulting juice would be harder to stop fermenting. So how well this works with your juice source may take some experimentation.

I've only had one bottle bomb in the past half dozen years (before then, I just used kegs and didnt bottle at all). That was a few years ago with a wild yeast batch, crashed at 1.020 that burst over the summer - about 8 months later, stored at room temp. I've never had an ale yeast batch burst a bottle.

However, I dont try to bottle condition. When I stop fermentation with cold crashing or racking, I first wait about a week to make sure the cider is stable (unless its for a party or something where I know its gonna get consumed soon). Then I either bottle or keg condition. If I bottle without force carbing, it stays flat. I almost always do this for gallon test batches. Unlike beer, cider tastes fine flat, although its nice to have some bubbles. For keg batches, I force carbonate.

The only method for bottle conditioning I've seen that looks like it would be reliable for a starting cider maker is to not crash the cider completely, bottle it still fermenting, use a PET bottle to test for carbonation and then pasteurize when carbonation is done. There are a couple of threads on this method.

There are some commercial cider makers like JK Scrumpy and Etienne Dupont that bottle condition sweet cider. I'm pretty sure that they are using nitrogen reduction to do this - ie bottling right before the nutrient runs out. This is probably the best way to do it, but would take a lot of work and busted bottles to work out exactly how to do this.

I'd recommend looking around to see if you have some decent mid-sized orchards in your area. The boutique ones tend to have expensive juice, but the good sized production orchards are very reasonable. I can get 30gal of fresh juice from good cider apples for 2.85/gal. Some places up North are even cheaper. Not quite as convenient as the grocery store, but you know exactly what you are getting, and the quality will be good and consistent - as opposed to whatever they happen to be growing in China.

Oops I made a mistake on my first post, I did not rack the cider to the secondary at 1.020, I racked it at 1.012. Sorry for any confusion.

did you ever get bottle bombs tripp?

Thread from the dead.

I have a question about the below in bold...

Check gravity daily after 3 days. Fermentation should start the next day. About 5-7 days when it reaches 1.012 {correction at first I said 1.020, but that was wrong} or lower (the lower the number the dryer it will taste) rack it into the secondary fermenter and leave for at least 2 weeks. This will stop the fermentation and prevent it from becoming bone dry like wine or champagne yeast will do.

After 2 weeks, boil priming sugar in one cup of water and pour into a bottling bucket. Rack the cider into the bottling bucket (some people say you don’t stir) then bottle and cap. Wait 2 weeks (if you can) to drink.

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Do I wait 2 weeks after the beginning, or 2 weeks after racking?

That would be two weeks after racking. Racking alone won't stop fermentation. You need to cold crash and rack