First racking tomorrow … Quick question!

I will be racking my cider tomorrow for the first time and will most likely need to top the carboy so that I leave as little air space as possible. If the juice I used for my cider is freshly pressed cider, can I top with the a liter cider I had frozen a month ago when it all started? Do I have to add pectin enzyme to the non-fermented cider in order to avoid getting a cloudy cider after secondary is over?

Do you recommend I top with freshly pressed cider if that’s what it is made of originally or should I simply use apple juice from the store ?

Thanks

For topping up, you can use whatever you'd like. Remember that fermentation will restart, and you'll have more lees, which may necessitate more racking, which means more topping up..................

I like to top up with a similar wine or cider, but since you don't have that on hand, anything is fine. I've even found that if it's a very small amount of headspace, sanitized marbles work fine to reduce headspace.

I will probably not need much juice as I have lots of cider in my fermenting bucket. You're saying that even if I put as little as 1 liter in my carboy to top, I will have to rack again ?

Can I top with distilled water ?

you could blow a little CO2 on the top to fill the headspace. The space doesnt matter much - you just dont want it to oxidize. If you dont have any CO2 handy you can get a small can from a wine shop

naeco said:

Can I top with distilled water ?

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Only if you want to water down your cider. If you have more cider around, top up with that. That would work well.