Cider brewing advice needed

I currently love drinking cider but got sick of paying $50~ a carton so decided to brew my own, I'm about to start a batch of black rock cider... Mixture will consist of black rock cider 1kg of dextrose and apple snaps essence... I love my sweet cider and am no fan of dry cider, any one have any nice brews they are willing to share... Or tips on how to make the cider sweet and not dry

newbrewby said:

Or tips on how to make the cider sweet and not dry

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Easiest possible way: buy corny kegs, cold crash at 1.020 and keg.

newbrewby said:

I currently love drinking cider but got sick of paying $50~ a carton so decided to brew my own, I'm about to start a batch of black rock cider... Mixture will consist of black rock cider 1kg of dextrose and apple snaps essence... I love my sweet cider and am no fan of dry cider, any one have any nice brews they are willing to share... Or tips on how to make the cider sweet and not dry

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Welcome to the forum newbrewby!

I guess I have a question to lead off with. From your description above it sounds like you're going to mix store bought Black Rock cider with dextrose and apple essence. Is that correct?

Also, do you plan to carbonate? I ask because this can impact what method you choose. Of course you have different options depending on if you plan to keg or bottle and what other equipment you have available to you. Without more info from your setup I'm just going to take a few shots in the dark.

Personally, I think the easiest way to make a sweet cider is to allow it to ferment to dryness, stabilize it with kmeta and sorbate, then sweeten to taste. This is the preferred method by many other folks in this forum as well. You could also skip the stabilizers and do stove top pasteurization as mentioned in the sticky in this forum.

Remember if you go the cold crash route you will always need to keep your cider cold. If you don't fermentation will start back up, which can cause bottle bombs or an over pressured keg. Also, there is no guarantee that cold crashing will stop fermentation. Most of the time it works. But there are plenty of folks who've experienced otherwise.

TexasWine said:

Welcome to the forum newbrewby! I guess I have a question to lead off with. From your description above it sounds like you're going to mix store bought Black Rock cider with dextrose and apple essence. Is that correct? Also, do you plan to carbonate? I ask because this can impact what method you choose. Of course you have different options depending on if you plan to keg or bottle and what other equipment you have available to you. Without more info from your setup I'm just going to take a few shots in the dark. Personally, I think the easiest way to make a sweet cider is to allow it to ferment to dryness, stabilize it with kmeta and sorbate, then sweeten to taste. This is the preferred method by many other folks in this forum as well. You could also skip the stabilizers and do stove top pasteurization as mentioned in the sticky in this forum. Remember if you go the cold crash route you will always need to keep your cider cold. If you don't fermentation will start back up, which can cause bottle bombs or an over pressured keg. Also, there is no guarantee that cold crashing will stop fermentation. Most of the time it works. But there are plenty of folks who've experienced otherwise.

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Thanks and yes you are correct in assuming its store bought black rock cider.
I was planning on carbonating the cider when bottling it.
So sweetening it after it has finish fermenting is the way to go you reckon? Any suggestion on what I could use to sweeten it?
Cheers

Welcome!

The challenge with bottling cider is that sugars added after fermentation (aka "backsweetening") will cause your bottles to explode if left unchecked.

You have several options to get around this, here are the ones I can think of, but plenty of folks here will chime in with additional comments and opinions:

1. Backsweeten, then kill the yeast (aka "stabilize", done by either batch pasturizing or adding potasium sorbate) before bottling. This will leave you with STILL (non-carbonated) cider.
2. Backsweeten, kill the yeast, and keg - in kegging you're adding the carbonation directly with a CO2 tank.
3. Backsweeten using non-fermentable sugars like splenda, add bottling sugar (small amount of fermentable sugar) and bottle
4. Backsweeten, bottle, then bottle pasteurize (aka heat for a specified time). Potentially dangerous, but ok if you take a few precautions.
5. Backsweeten, bottle, then cold crash (aka refridgerate). Only makes yeast dormant, so the yeast will become active again as soon as the bottle warms up... zombie yeast!!!

All these methods have pros and cons, so you'll want to look them up here on HBT. Each method has been explained in a lot of detail, by those smarter and more eloquent than me. Some people have even added pictures!

I hope that helps. At first it seems a little complicated, but it's really not. Most people choose one of these methods and go with it, and you'll find you'll improve with a little practice. You're on the path to making some great cider! Good luck!

newbrewby said:

Thanks and yes you are correct in assuming its store bought black rock cider.
I was planning on carbonating the cider when bottling it.
So sweetening it after it has finish fermenting is the way to go you reckon? Any suggestion on what I could use to sweeten it?
Cheers

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Oh, so this is a kit? I thought you were buying alcoholic cider and trying to start with it! Whew!

OK, so if you're going to bottle carbonate and sweeten you've only got one option: pasteurization.

Look up the sticky in the cider forum for stove top pasteurization. That's the best place to start. Other folks have applied these principles using their dishwasher, and others have used coolers full of hot water. Just make sure to get the bottles hot enough for long enough to kill the yeast.

You can use table sugar, corn sugar, honey, another juice or juice concentrate, really anything sweet. Even juice of with a different flavor can be used, like cherry or raspberry.

Hope this helps.

I'm new to making cider, so I could be wrong on this. But when I was talking to some guys at a brew store, and I don't know if this was mentioned or not in this thread, but I believe the type of yeast you use affects the sweetness and dryness as well. I thought they said a champagne yeast would make a very dry cider, as well as most wine yeasts, but that for example an ale yeast would make a sweeter cider.

All yeasts will eat up any available sugar until it's dry. There's just too many simple sugars in apple juice to avoid this. Obviously if you go beyond the alcohol tolerance of the yeast it will die a slow toxic death and there might be residual sugars left, but then you won't be able to bottle carbonate it.

In my experience wine yeasts strip a little bit of the applyness and leave you with a more wine taste unless you age it for extended periods. Ale yeasts allow you to retain a little of the apple flavor if you want to drink it young. That said, if you start with juice around 1.050 or so, any yeast will end up going bone dry.

The "Keg and Cold Crash" method works best for me because I just don't trust myself doing the stove top pasteurization method.

Ok so yesterday I bought some lactose to sweeten it up, on the packet it says to put 100grams per 25 litres of beer, but consider cider is sweeter I was thinking of adding more but I don't know how much more, has anyone used lactose before???