Minimze Sediment When Adding Yeast To Cider At Bottling?

I have a cider that's been sitting been fermenting for three months, two of those months in secondary.

I'm assuming that if I want carbonation then I will have to add yeast to the bottling bucket, because the original yeast is spent/settled out.

The problem is this creates all that sediment in the bottom of the bottles and I'd like to minimize that if at all possible.

Any Suggestions?

Do I even need to add this extra yeast? How can you tell?

I have never found a need to add yeast, in fact I try my darnedest to get rid of the stuff!

If you add sugar it will still carbonate as there is some yeast left.

bfbf- Even after it's been transferred from primary and has been sitting in secondary for 2-3 months? There's enough yeast there to build up and carbonate?

I assumed that at that point it's similar to as if i cold crashed the cider, in that all the yeast would be next out of suspension so that when I siphoned to my bottling bucket I wouldn't have enough yeast to eat the priming sugar

take out a small cup of cider. Taste it (does it taste a bit of yeast?) The rest add a couple of table spoons of sugar and leave it out a day stir, leave it another day has it gone foamy? If so that would show the yeast is working.

bfbf - Great idea. So pretty much I'll take out a sample for my hydrometer, taste it...

Then put in a cup, add some sugar, cover it with tinfoil and see what happens over the course of a day or two?

Hey one more question. If I'm leaving a cup out with sugar and it starts to foam then how do I know if that foam is the result fo yeast already in the cider.....or of its the result of wild yeast or an infection?

brewinginct said:

Hey one more question. If I'm leaving a cup out with sugar and it starts to foam then how do I know if that foam is the result fo yeast already in the cider.....or of its the result of wild yeast or an infection?

Click to expand...

....... Because you covered it!

Trust us. There will be plenty of yeast in suspension to carbonate the cider.

Well I siphoned off a sample of the cider yesterday...gravity of .998 and completely crystal clear.

So I took the sample, put it in a sterilized glass, threw in maybe a teaspoon of priming sugar, and covered it with tin foil.

That was about 12 hours ago, still no signs of fermentation. I know it's too soon to see any sort of activity but exactly what type of activity should I be looking for? Just pressure on the tin foil? Any sort of krausen or foam?

I would have suggested using an airlock so that you could watch something physically move. The pressure that caused the movement would be evidence of fermentation.Or else a refractometer reading after adding the priming sugar, then again later would tell you the same thing (assuming that you could measure the difference with the sugar/cider ratio used) but hind sight is 20/20.

With the tin foil you will be looking for things like foam/krausen, bubbles, or sediment after the fact.

Good luck!

I'm not sure you will see anything. Do you have a small plastic pop or water bottle? Sanitize it and pour the mix in there and seal. It will start to pressurize when activity starts. Could take a week or more.