Looking For Truly Sweet Cider.....

As title states, I'd like to make a real sweet cider. I have to bottle condition so I need a way to keep it sweet. I would love to not have to back sweeten if possible.

Any ideas?:rockin:

You could use a nonfermentable sweetener, like lactose, or an artificial sweetener like Splenda.

Personally, I don't find lactose to be all that sweet. I suspect it would take pounds & pounds to make a dry cider into a sweet cider. While I hate to recommend it, I would go with the artificial sweetener.

If you are OK with drinking it still, you can cold crash it and retain the natural apple sugar. Cider is more like wine than beer in that it tastes fine still. It is better to have something that tastes good still rather than unnatural tasting but sparkling. If you want carbonation you can always bottle pasteurize

I'd like to keep it sweet & carb it.......what is the bottle pasteurize you speak of?

You could use a sugar alcohol like Xylitol or Sorbitol. Won't ferment and no artificial sweetener taste.

ericd said:

You could use a sugar alcohol like Xylitol or Sorbitol. Won't ferment and no artificial sweetener taste.

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Interesting...........

ericd said:

You could use a sugar alcohol like Xylitol or Sorbitol. Won't ferment and no artificial sweetener taste.

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Those sugar alcohols, even with just the amount in 2 sticks of sugar free gum, give me the runs.

alright got the yeast farts so don't want the SWMBO dealing with that issue for sure..

I used a product called 'Wine Conditioner' once, I believe it is non-fermentable sugar, but it may also contain stuff to kill yeast...

ColoradoXJ13 said:

I used a product called 'Wine Conditioner' once, I believe it is non-fermentable sugar, but it may also contain stuff to kill yeast...

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I think that's back-sweetening...

Carbing sweet cider is difficult. You can ferment to dry, and backsweeten with a sugar substitute, but trust me it doesnt taste anything like sweet cider with the natural sugars from the apples. The only way to safely do it is with artificial backsweetening. You can successfully bottle carb with a cider that hasnt fermented out all the way, but it is a bottle bomb waiting to happen.

And dont even contemplate the pasturizing method. I tried it on one bottle and it blew up real good. If you do bottle carb, you have to cold crash all the bottles and keep them cold after it gets to the carb level you want, which can take 2 days, or a couple weeks. Its VERY touchy, and then you have to keep 50 bottles in the fridge until gone.

I gave up bottle carbing cider and bought a corny and co2 setup used. The $100 invested in that is worth it to me to not have stuff blow up.

ColoradoXJ13 said:

I used a product called 'Wine Conditioner' once, I believe it is non-fermentable sugar, but it may also contain stuff to kill yeast...

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It has sorbate in it, to inhibit yeast reproduction, giving a still, non-carbonated product in the end.

hmmmmmmmm....alright guess I'm off to corny kegging it.

Wondering if I use a ale yeast on an very high cider OG so the yeast will die out before complete......then prime with small amount of sugar.

brewagentjay said:

hmmmmmmmm....alright guess I'm off to corny kegging it.

Wondering if I use a ale yeast on an very high cider OG so the yeast will die out before complete......then prime with small amount of sugar.

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If your yeast die there won't be any left to eat the priming sugar.

I believe the only real way to to bottle carb, sweet cider is to keeve cider. Keeving is the process to remove certain nutrients that yeast needs to replicate. If this is done properly, your cider will have finished fermenting sweet and then you can carb it...

Traditional cider houses bottle carb sweet cider using a number of methods. IMHO keeving is more work than most and too unpredictable.

You can accomplish the same thing by getting juice from a good orchard that doesnt use nitrogen fertilizers on their apples. Thats not hard if you live in or near apple country.

Wheat yeasts use a lot of nitrogen and can help the process. Cold ferments and long ferment times also help. I've got bottles from 3 batches I made this Oct from no-nitrogen Stayman, York and Empires and Wyeast 3333 that all got a nice bottle carb after 6 months.

I've got a keg batch of 3333 that I just crashed tonight and I'll probably pull a dozen grolsch bottles before I keg it to see what kind of bottle carb I get over the next few months and whether it gets to the point where it could burst a bottle. The test batches of 3333 all got brilliantly clear on the crash and my guess is that any yeast that is left for the bottle carb will run out of nutrient way before the sugar is gone.

If you dont live in apple country start checking ebay and craigslist for a kegging setup

Regardless, its going to taste better if you cold crash it. The difference is that then the sugar you have in the mix is the natural apple sugar, and it tastes a lot more like apples. During fermentation the short chain sugars get digested first, then the longer chain ones. Its the longer chain ones that contain a lot of the apple taste. If you ferment all the apple sugars out, you can add back sweetness, but not the apple taste. When using fresh juice, its a big difference. Back sweetening can turn a batch that went too long into something drinkable, but it wont get the great taste back. I'm not sure if the difference will be as noticeable with store bought juice, because they usually dont use very good apples to start with. Cold crashing does take some time and patience but it is worth it IMHO.

Alright..........Anyone try this Southern Sweet Cider Recipe?

Add one of JT Bowtie's tears to each bottle.

vespa2t said:

And dont even contemplate the pasturizing method. I tried it on one bottle and it blew up real good. .

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PLEASE tell me your details. Seriously. I did an experiment over the weekend and want to compare notes.

Did anybody consider using some Crystal malt? I have done Brandon O' Graff recipe with a number of different Crystal varieties. I have found that I can make it pretty sweet by steeping some Crystal 80 with 1 pound of Light DME. It ends up with some body, and it tastes great and you can control the sweetness with which Crystal malt you choose.

just add about 1.5 - 2 quarts of honey to 5 gallons of cider. i've made many batches with that ratio and they turned out strong, sweet and bubbly. honey ferments slower than apple juice and with this kind of ratio you will certainly have unfermented sugars due to the high alcohol content killing yeast off. the trick is how to bottle in order to get the carbonation. you can bottle a bit early but then you will have a fair amount of sediment. you could also try priming with a yeast strain that tolerates higher alcohol levels than yeast you use for the primary fermentation. that would probably be the best way.

billynoah said:

just add about 1.5 - 2 quarts of honey to 5 gallons of cider. i've made many batches with that ratio and they turned out strong, sweet and bubbly. honey ferments slower than apple juice and with this kind of ratio you will certainly have unfermented sugars due to the high alcohol content killing yeast off. the trick is how to bottle in order to get the carbonation. you can bottle a bit early but then you will have a fair amount of sediment. you could also try priming with a yeast strain that tolerates higher alcohol levels than yeast you use for the primary fermentation. that would probably be the best way.

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I would not suggest this, as you have no idea when the yeast will really die off, and you could get some bad bottle bombs.

if you wait for the fermentation to finish and then prime you won't have bottle bombs. you can also avoid this if you bottle early and use a hydrometer.

billynoah said:

if you wait for the fermentation to finish and then prime you won't have bottle bombs. you can also avoid this if you bottle early and use a hydrometer.

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He is asking about different methods to stop fermentation early in order to keep some of the juice's sweetness intact - i.e. not get eaten up by the yeast. Thus, telling him to wait for completed fermentation is somewhat moot.

well i don't see anything in the original post about stopping fermentation early.

As title states, I'd like to make a real sweet cider. I have to bottle condition so I need a way to keep it sweet. I would love to not have to back sweeten if possible.

Any ideas?

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if the original liquor contains enough sugar you can certainly make a "real sweet cider" which is completely finished... right?

I don't really care about how I get the end result really. I just like a sweet cider like drink I can make for the SWMBO.......... I prefer not stopping fermentation as seems like more complicated.

thats what i thought. i strongly encourage the addition of honey if it's acceptable. it will most assuredly produce a sweet cyder which can be left to fully ferment and will totally knock you on your you know what.

How exactly does adding honey make it sweet and sparkling? It either ferments completely dry and then you prime and bottle a sparkling dry cider. Or the yeast dies off due to a high specific gravity leaving you with a strong and sweet still cider. You mentioned doing the later than using a second higher alcohol resistant yeast to bottle with but they would still eat through all the extra sugars once again going dry and shortly after bottle bombs.

well i've bottled cyser (cyder w/honey) during the very tail end of fermentation quite a few times and successfully achieved a bottled conditioned, carbonated drink which was still sweet... and i've never had a bottle bomb. that being said, i'm sure i've come close because sometimes the bottles are EXTREMELY carbonated and foam over a bit when opened like champagne. i've never used a hydrometer but i assume that one could get a bit more precise by doing so and avoid the possibility of exploding bottles altogether.

the idea behind using a yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance as a primer is that you could possibly reduce the amount of sediment and have a better idea just how much more fermentation would be going on... i dunno. it's just an idea, but it seems plausible.

the fact is that i have produced sweet, carbonated cyder by the addition of honey and by bottling at the tail end of the fermentation. i'm just sharing my technique. it works & i thought this would be valuable to the thread.

good luck.

I'm still open to all suggestions......

mkling said:

Personally, I don't find lactose to be all that sweet. I suspect it would take pounds & pounds to make a dry cider into a sweet cider.

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I completely agree with this. I tried to sweeten a cider with lactose once and i put an ungodly amount in and it barely did a thing. It just doesn't taste sweet to me.