need moral support.

Okay, so I've got 5 gal sitting the garage. I worked it up about 3-4 weeks ago. The bubbling has stopped, the cider has cleared down, I pulled a sample out. It's tasting like a wine almost. I am tasting very little apple flavors at all. Not sweet either which I am guessing is a good thing.

I plan on bottling it to add some carbination. When I add the sugars will that sweeten it, or will it all work out during the process? I'm also thinking of adding something that wont process out like splenda. Any reason not to?

I used:

* Apples from the back yard. They were planted before I bought the palce. They are not sweet to begin with.
* Campden tabs (just in case)
* White Labs cider yeast.
* Time.

Taste wise, I am thinking it's not bad.. just not flavorful. Wife thought it was not great on the nose and not to happy about the taste until I sweetened it.

Thats exactly what I did!

I like flat dry cider so I'm not planning on complicating with further additions. But, one thing I have consistently read regarding making cider like this (e.g. here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scrumpy/cider/cider.htm) is that a long period of maturation following this point can seriously improve the taste. I'm planning on moving mine into a demi-john (=carboy I think) and just leaving it maybe till the spring.

Cheers,

Ben

The priming sugar will ferment out, that's what carbonates the cider in the bottle. The apple flavour does come back with a bit of aging. Four to six months after bottling it should be very tasty. Regards, GF.

Turned out I never got the suphur smell and taste out. The underlying cider flavor wise was not worth any more effort. The side batch did turn out well and I learned some valuable lessons.

And now I have a freed up carboy. What to brew next? What to brew next?

Dry cider wise - it was still way too young.... 2 months is too young... The general rule is that a totally dry cider can take a year to smooth out.... Then, you can end up with something that tastes like an appley/fruity white wine...

I have run into sulphur smell from 2-things.... 1 is not enough nutrients, 2 is not enough time.

Then... Apple cider from home apples can be kinda dicey... Sweet eating apples generally make bland cider, and good cider apples rarely make good fresh eating. Crab apples can be a good thing to blend into your ciders....

Thanks