Forgive me for my noobness

Alright, I've read a ton of different recipes to make cider online. Some call for only a single fermentation and some for primary and secondary. Could one of you wise folks who has done the single fermentation process raise their hand or be so kind as to get in touch with me? I have many questions. Thanks in advance

IF you decide to PM me, You gotta promise you will delete the messages I send you. I don't want any evidence....uh.....um......I mean.....uhhhh








Seriously though....you've got a limited amount of PM messages in your Jr. Member in box, and I hat it when we just get to the good stuff then your box is full and you think I've abandoned you.

Here's the deal. You don't have to use a secondary with cider. The big advantage of using a secondary is when you're brewing beer, and there is hops and hot/cold break material in your trub (the sediment on the bottom of your fermenter). With cider, the only thing in that trub/settlement is yeast.

Unless you plan on aging your cider for more than 2 or 3 months before bottling, their is really no reason to transfer it to a secondary, unless you just want to free up your primary for a new batch (as your primary fermenter needs to be a little bigger in order to accommodate the krusen/foam during the first days of fermentation).

Hope this helps, and welcome to the forum!

Sweet. Yea I just let'er bubble away from a couple days in the primary bucket then threw it into a bunch of old glass cider jugs (4L) and she took about a 3-4 weeks before she stopped bubbling more than once every minute or two. Now from my understanding she's completely dry now and there should be no sugars left in it? Is it neccesary to throw in a little campden or some other? yeast killer or something before backsweetening?

well ... nomaly you dont put it in smaller bottles till after the fermentation has stoped

for a lot of resons , but the main 2 are that if you kept it on one fermenter . now that its done ,, you couls simply rack it off the yeast in to a bottleing bucket or keg.
if the 5 gal batch was fermenting in a bunch of smaller bottles you now have to rack each one making more mess and more exsposer to possable conatamnation.

if you are going to back sweetin then you do need to add something befor hand