sodium benzoate...give up or no?

I was all excited to start my new cider with 5 gallons of natural cider from Whole Foods. Didn't think until the next day when my cider hadn't started fermenting to look at the ingredients again and saw that sodium benzoate was the only other ingredient besdies apples. I started it on Thursday and I'm not really excited to just have a big jug of warm apple cider sitting in the dining room (small apartment). Is it worth making a yeast starter to try and save this or will the sodium benzoate shut that down?
Other ingredients
1.5 lbs lite brown sugar
1 pound honey malt steeped prior to adding

Don't bother. Sodium Benzoate is a preservative. It will most likely kill your yeast. If you used wine yeast, I'd check it one more time before you give up. It may be very hard to tell it's fermenting if you're using a bucket.

you can get it going with a huge starter. if you have beer ready to come off a yeast cake, rack the cider on top of the cake, and it will ferment.

depending on the yeast used though, you may have off flavors produced by fermenting in the presence of preservatives ( which will not kill yeast, only prevent the reproduction of yeast)

I'm using white labs english ale yeast and fermenting in a glass carboy. I might try making a starter to try and salvage things. Or else I'll be having a sweetened cider drinking party

You can get it to ferment. Starter will probably help. The difficult part is getting it to tasted decent afterwards. I hope you will have better luck than I did.

You can dilute fresh cider containing sodium benzoate and get it to ferment. I think that at a .1% solution there is approximately .938 g/l of sodium benzoate. I read a couple research papers from the food science community and it sounds like you need to have .3-.2 g/l or less in order for fermentation to take place. My solution then was to dillute it with preservative free apple juice at a 1:4 ratio (1 gallon preservative: 4 gallons non-preservative). I made a scaled down starter like this that worked great and am now fermenting my version of an apfelwein:

10 cans Old Orchard Apple Juice concentrate
1 Gallon local cider with NaBenz
2lbs Brown Sugar
yeast nutrient
Red star cuvee
o.g. 1.063
will let you know how it turns out

Also since it has the preservative if you add it on accident the yeast doesn't do a thing so you can still drink the sweet cider even if you don't want to go through the trouble of diluting it.

So this is my first time with cider, and i am just curious what kind of timeline to follow. I used store bought organic juice with with a champagne yeast, and two pounds dark brown sugar in a five gal. All is Well a week into it. Also this being a college house project the fastest timeline is desired, but i am willing to stand up for some quality! What kind of alcohol content should be expected? Once again COLLEGE! On another note aré there any additives come bottling time that enhance flavor like cinnimon or nuttmeg? Thanks

Sungreen20, great advice. I had about 3/4 packet of Nottingham which I brought to life with some go-ferm and then put into a starter of about 3/4 gallon of apple juice and some energizer. Once that was going good, I pitched it into my primary of 3 gallons of kirkland's apple juice and 1 gal of orchard benzoated stuff, plus some nutrient. The ferment is going well!

... uh, nevermind.

(Edit: <sigh> Note to Self: Remember to read date of original poster)

So I again made the mistake of purchasing cider with preservatives! I've made several batches from a local brand of cider and this year they decided to add benzoate! Which is a real bummer as I no longer have access to any preservative free juice. Anyways to make a long story short, I was trying to make a cyser, and added 4lbs of honey to 5 gallons of cider and pitched a packet of safale and... nothing.

I was eventually able to get the honey and preservative cider to ferment to 1.025 by racking on to a fresh Wyeast 1968 yeast cake from a batch of brown ale. The final result is one of the best ciders I've made. Only downside is that it took 2 months to ferment!

You're lucky! I managed to get some sorbate-laced cider to ferment (albeit very slowly) by massively overpitching, but it tasted nasty at the end.

Sungreen20 said:

So I again made the mistake of purchasing cider with preservatives! I've made several batches from a local brand of cider and this year they decided to add benzoate! Which is a real bummer as I no longer have access to any preservative free juice. Anyways to make a long story short, I was trying to make a cyser, and added 4lbs of honey to 5 gallons of cider and pitched a packet of safale and... nothing.

I was eventually able to get the honey and preservative cider to ferment to 1.025 by racking on to a fresh Wyeast 1968 yeast cake from a batch of brown ale. The final result is one of the best ciders I've made. Only downside is that it took 2 months to ferment!

Click to expand...

Yep. Benzoate is not the same as trying to ferment with sorbate ... sorbate is much tougher

For example, when making cranberry wine, cranberries have the issue of naturally high levels of benzoic acid. Benzoic acid is a close cousin of the preservative Sodium Benzoate ... but is even a bit stronger antifungal/microbicidal ... so much so that, cranberry wine often needs to be made not only with an aggressive wine yeast, but the juice also sometimes needs to be pre-inoculated with a dose of the yeast to reduce the benzoic acid ... then a strong starter of the yeast is used.

pH affects the action of Sodium Benzoate (and also benzoic acid)... in a higher pH must (that is, in a "lower acid" must) the benzoates and benzoic acid are not as effective. The effects of benzoates are neutralized at around pH 5.5 or so ... on the other hand, benzoates are most effective, as I recall, in the mid 2’s (say, pH 2.5).

BrewinDuluth said:

I was all excited to start my new cider with 5 gallons of natural cider from Whole Foods. Didn't think until the next day when my cider hadn't started fermenting to look at the ingredients again and saw that sodium benzoate was the only other ingredient besdies apples. I started it on Thursday and I'm not really excited to just have a big jug of warm apple cider sitting in the dining room (small apartment). Is it worth making a yeast starter to try and save this or will the sodium benzoate shut that down?
Other ingredients
1.5 lbs lite brown sugar
1 pound honey malt steeped prior to adding

Click to expand...

I think this is a lost cause. Sodium benzoate blocks the yeast's ability to assimilate food/nutrition, so it dies. It MIGHT be possible to dilute the must with chemical free juice, but I have no idea as to what levels of benzoate will impact the yeast. Even if you're able to dilute it to the point where fermentation is possible, I'd think the yeast would still be fairly stressed; besides, you might end up having to dilute to the point where you had 15 gallons of must to ferment.

Also, sodium benzoate breaks down into benzene, a toxic chemical & known carcinogen, so even heating/boiling won't do you any good in trying to overcome the stuff. Then there's the possibility of the benzoate giving it an off flavor. Some people can actually taste it, much like sorbate. If it were me, I'd just write this one off & start over, making certain to read the label very carefully from now on. Others might have more knowledge & experience than I do though, I'm certainly no chemist. If you try to ferment it, good luck, you'll need it.
Regards, GF.

Sungreen20,

I know it was a while since you posted about the cyser with benzoate, but I'm curious about your results... When you say "ferment to 1.025", do you mean that 1.025 was your final gravity and it didn't go lower than that?

I'm also wondering if the "local" brand you're referring to is Pepin Heights (I noticed you're from Minnesota). I managed to make the same mistake of picking up some of theirs (had to try the SweeTango), not noticing that it had benzoate in it. It listed it at 0.01%, so I figured I'd give it a try anyway, based on your previous post about the quantity required to prevent fermentation. I only did a 1-gallon batch, so if it didn't work, not much of a loss.

I've managed to get it down to 1.015 so far (after about a month and a half). I tried two different yeasts - the champagne yeast seemed to be the one that took hold after the Safcider didn't seem to be doing anything. The activity has dramatically slowed down in the past couple weeks and it has started to clear. I'm not sure that it's done yet - will need to let it sit for a while longer and check on it again. However, I'm wondering if the benzoate might cause the fermentation to stop notably higher than 1.000, or if it's just ramping down and will eventually get all the way to "done".

For my results so far, I racked to secondary today to get it off the mound of dead yeast. Pulled a sample and threw it in the fridge for a bit to cool it down. I have to say, it's actually kind of tasty. I think it would be even better with some carbonation, but the benzoate question has me wondering whether I could successfully bottle-condition it.

A fellow on gotmead managed to get some benzoate laced cider down to 1.000 but it took a concentrated effort of over pitching yeast and stirring / aerating / babysitting. If your cider stops before 1.000 with a champagne yeast I think your chances of bottle conditioning are poor.