rookie to cider

I tried making cider. I have already made a few batches of beer and I figured this would be a nice change. I bought the no preservative apple juice and threw it in a carboy with cote des blancs yeast, acid blend ( citric malic and tartaric acid) and whirlfloc at the recommendation of my home brew shop guy. I left it at room temperature and it started to ferment but started to stink up my room really bad. that is when i realized that the apple juice i bought needed to be refrigerated. so i dumped it and now have musselmans apple cider in a carboy with the same ingredients and yeast in a fridge at 50 degrees. no fermentation after a few days. is this too cold for the yeast to do its thing? what can I do to fix this without the smell?

I ferment my cider in the low to mid 60s and it doesn't smell bad. Perhaps its your yeast. I use an ale yeast, usually Nottingham.

i got some cider that im currently fermenting at room temp and on the bottle says "refrigerate after opening to maintain freshness"
should i have used different cider or will i be fine?

I may be wrong but I think it wants to be refrigerated to keep it from fermenting. The one cider I bought said exactly that on the label. Since your fermenting it to make a hard cider I think it should be fine. I am in the process of fermenting my first cider. Its been in the primary for about a month so I'm gonna check it soon. Also from what I had read apple juice or cider can smell bad while fermenting depending on the strain of yeast. I used the wyeast sweet mead to try and maintain some sweetness. Mine had an odor while it was fermenting but smells pretty good now. So hopefully I'm somewhat on the right track with this and if not hopefully someone with some knowledge will chime in.

this stuff was putrid when i opened it up and smelled it.....it was stuck in my nose and i caught a wiff of it at work the next day.....i almost fell off a ladder lol

The smell will depend on the yeast you use. But there will almost always be some during the initial fermentation. More importantly though, you need to keep it near the ideal temp range for the yeast you are using. Guess what, spoiled apple juice is how you get cider, so that is what you are trying you do. By soiled I of course mean under conditions you control with your own chemistry and yeast. The smell will go away after a week or two depending on the recipe and some other environmental factors. But going to hot or cold can strain the yeast with funky results. Shove that carboy in a closet, get a fan, out tell you wife "what smell?"for a short time and things will get better.

There is plenty of great info on yeast out there and it applies very similarly for cider, wine, beer, or mead.

Almost forgot, most importantly never dump a batch unless it really looks like a science excitement after 4-6 months. These things take time and things will appear to get worse before they get better. And they get much better. Just relax...you know the rest

Search the forum for "Rhino Farts".

Insomniac said:

Search the forum for "Rhino Farts".

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This! Cider with wine yeast smells funky, sulfury, and all around nasty compared to beer. It's fine, though and no need to dump it and no need to refrigerate it. It's just part of the process. I've heard that adding some yeast nutrient can keep the smell down, but haven't tried it yet. In any case, in my experience the funky smell only lasts a couple days. Cheers!

I haven't had any problems with odor yet. I started my cider on 10/2, using White Labs - English Cider Yeast. I also added several pounds of sugar, pre-fermentation. I sampled some last night, while testing SG, and it still tastes great, with only a very mild alcohol/yeast odor.