Hard Cider Yeast question.

So last night I got the hankerin for some hard cider. I plan on starting a batch when i get home from work tonight.

My question is this... Would it be ok to use Safeale US-05? It is all I have on hand at the moment. I have never used an ale yeast for a cider.

Any insight is much appreciated

Ale yeasts will ferment ciders without any problems. You should ferment at the bottom of the temperature range if at all possible.

Thanks. If you don't mind answering another question....

I am using a pretty simple recipe as follows.

5 gallons of preservative free apple cider.
1lb of brown sugar.
1 packet of safale US-05

If started tonight, do you suppose I will have a decent product by thanksgiving?

That's 2 months away...yes, definitely...

spriggan486 - You may need to back sweeten a little, US-05 is a monster and will bring it pretty dry. You did not use too much sugar so it should be good, but save a few bottles and taste them 6 months, 12 months, and 2 years from now. You will be amazed at the changes and improvements, and make you start planning years in advance.

I like to to bump US05 batches with 2lbs of sugar and cold crash around 1.008 - 1.010. It comes out great. I'd use a little lighter sugar, but it should taste OK if you only used a pound. If you ferment it dry, it will taste good in a year. If you cold crash it will taste good in 2-3 weeks.

I ended up doing 2 pounds of sugar. How long should I cold crash it once it gets to 1.010?

Crash it for at least a day, two or three if you have time. The best sg to crash is partly a function of the acid balance in the juice and also your taste. I like it around 1.010, which is about half the sugar in most commercial ciders. If you like it sweeter, you might want to start checking for taste around 1.015 and if that is too sweet, you can always let it get drier.

CK - when you advise people to cold crash, you should mention that if they're planning to bottle- or keg-carbonate, that might not be their best option.

I just about cold crashed my 2 batches this week - they're sitting at 1.008 right now and one of them (the one with the Lalvin 1116, oddly) tastes pretty decent right now. Problem is, the primary drinker of this cider (Mrs. Stagger) is keen to have it carbonated and I don't have the equpment (or the desire, really) to force-carb. So I'm waiting for it to go dry & I'll backsweeten with an unfermentable at bottling time.

Staggerlee - Sorry, I should have been more explicit. You asked what would clear the cider after fermentation. I suggested that you search the forum on “cold crash” for more info. I presume this poster has read something about the process of cold crashing as well. This question comes up in almost every discussion about cold crashing.

Yes, that is the catch. You cant bottle carbonate a cold crashed cider. Hopefully it is somewhat self explanatory: If you remove or otherwise stop the yeast in a cider, it wont bottle carbonate. You will need to use a keg to add carbonation or drink it still. If you want to drink it dry and bottle carbonated, don’t stop the yeast. Cold crashing can address many of the difficulties of making good cider but not all of them.

Cider making is a lot more like making wine than beer. There is no easy recipe for bottle carbonated sweet cider (or bottle carbonating anything with a lot of fermentable sugar for that matter). Even most of the commercial cider houses use forced carb. The ones that still do it in the bottle are very few and most have been working it out for generations. Other than JKS dropping a few clues here and there, they don’t post much on HBT

I’m glad the 1116 is working for you . I might have let mine ferment out too far. What sort of apples are you using?

If you are dead set on bottle carbing, you can do that, but if you and your wife think it tastes pretty decent now, you should save a bottle or two so that you can remember what you had. You can ferment that last bit of apple sugar all the way out and then add something different to back sweeten. I will be very surprised if it tastes as good as it does now at 1.008, but wish you luck. That last bit of sugar hold a lot of the apple taste. You don’t get that back with splenda or lactose. D47 will preserve more of the apple taste when it gets completely dry (or did for me at least), but I’d prefer it still at 1.008 over perfectly carbed at 0.998.

Maybe you could use one of those seltzer bottles chargers and carb a liter at a time?

CK - sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was upbraiding you. I did read up on cold crashing & thought I'd just mention the carbing thing here in case spriggan was thinking along my lines: a lot of posters here seem to want something like a commercial cider: dry but with some residual sweetness and as much apple flavour as can be managed, and carbed up something good.

Let me just take a moment here to thank you for your fantastic contributions to the cider forum. Your experiments and information have been invaluable.

Strangely, the batch with the D47 is quite sour, whereas the 1116 batch is on the money for tartness. Both the same bunch of apples - random stuff scrumped from friends and neighbours. A good proportion were not ideally ripe. So maybe the interaction between the 1116 and the young apples has made a happy accident.

*sigh*, maybe I'll have to look into kegging. Thanks again for all your help.

Your apples are probably more tart than mine were when I tested the 1116 and D47. I used mostly Staymans for those batches, which have a lot of flavor but not much tartness in the finish. Some of the other yeasts I thought were bland might taste OK with stronger tasting apples

Kegging has a lot going for it. The tank and regulator will set you back a c-note, but used kegs are cheaper than buying bottles and a lot less work.

I have some ideas about bottle conditioning a sweet cider using nitrogen reduction. I'm pretty sure that is how the traditional cider houses are doing it. It will probably involve breaking a lot of bottles, so I'll likely wait until next year

CvilleKevin said:

Your apples are probably more tart than mine were when I tested the 1116 and D47. I used mostly Staymans for those batches, which have a lot of flavor but not much tartness in the finish. Some of the other yeasts I thought were bland might taste OK with stronger tasting apples

Kegging has a lot going for it. The tank and regulator will set you back a c-note, but used kegs are cheaper than buying bottles and a lot less work.

I have some ideas about bottle conditioning a sweet cider using nitrogen reduction. I'm pretty sure that is how the traditional cider houses are doing it. It will probably involve breaking a lot of bottles, so I'll likely wait until next year

Click to expand...

I know this is an old thread, but I was wondering if you could expand on the nitrogen reduction theory.

girdwood said:

I know this is an old thread, but I was wondering if you could expand on the nitrogen reduction theory.

Click to expand...

I'm curious too...

Reduced nitrogen means there will be less available nitrogen in the juice, which translates to less nutrients for the yeast, which allows you to slow down fermentation by either keeving or racking often after clearing the juice initially with a load of PME, which results in a greater chance for the cider to stop fermenting while retaining some residual sugar.

bembel said:

Reduced nitrogen...
clearing the juice initially with a load of PME...

Click to expand...

Is it possible for the cider maker to reduce Nitrogen or is it only determined by the Nitrogen content in the juice?

Is PME the Pectin enzyme that is added prior to pitching yeast or one of those fining agents that are used toward the end of fermentation?

As far as I know there is no way to reduce nitrogen, but the point is not to add nutrients unless you want a speedy, flavorless cider. You can spend hours reading through this thread and and get countless conflicting recommendations and even more bad advice. Read Yoopers sticky at the top of the forum. It's the next best thing to Claude's book.

Thank you.
I don't add nutrients and do my best to ferment at the low end of temp.

PME... what is it? Is it just pectin enzyme?

CMcPherson said:

Thank you.
I don't add nutrients and do my best to ferment at the low end of temp.

PME... what is it? Is it just pectin enzyme?

Click to expand...

I mistyped that, sorry. I meant to say PE. What you can buy most readily in homebrew shops or on-line is wide spectrum Pectic Enzyme ( PE ), often called Pectinase.

Its an all purpose product and contains a cocktail of different pectic enzymes for degrading pectin to clear juice it before fermentation, that is what I was referring to.

PME, on the other hand, is Pectin Methyl Esterase, a very pure, very specific enzyme used in Keeving.

According to Cider Supply

"PME is ultra-pure and about as concentrated as it gets without becoming unstable and breaking down. No other activities are blended in with the PME. It only has one job and that's to break down the pectin molecules as fast as possible and completely as possible."

Put it this way, you can't keeve properly with PE and need the PME to do it , but if you just want to clear the cider to do a debourbage ( quasi, quick and dirty keeve) you can use loads of PE

Awesome...that's the best answer I've received to this question I've wondered about.

They just published this 37 page PDF, its skewed commercial but lots of good info none the less

http://www.scottlab.com/pdf/2015CiderHandbook.pdf

bembel said:

Reduced nitrogen means there will be less available nitrogen in the juice, which translates to less nutrients for the yeast, which allows you to slow down fermentation by either keeving or racking often after clearing the juice initially with a load of PME, which results in a greater chance for the cider to stop fermenting while retaining some residual sugar.

Click to expand...

+1. I am another guy who racks a lot to control fermentation speed, with no nutrients. I like Cote des Blancs at about 55 F, works great for me. Also I do not add any pectinase. To clear the cider and rid it of too much yeast if it ferments too fast, I use gelatin for both purposes. Comes out sweetish if I want, around 1.010-1.012, and clear as crystal.

Nutrients and fast fermentation are wonderful.... for me to poop on!

+1 Triumph reference [emoji28]

I am glad I subscribed to this thread. The references here have led me down a new path to my cider making. The Lost Meadow Orchard and Wittenham Hill pages are great reading. Now off to France to try some cidre doux!

Understanding that this is a thread from 2009, I just wanted to add that I am making 2 batches of hard cider using S-05 and will cold crash it at 1.010 or so for sweetness but will use a spunding valve on a corny keg for the CO2 while it is fermenting. Cold crashing also holds the gravity at 1.010 and upon bottling, only the first couple/few get yeast since I am pulling the yeast off the bottom via the pickup tube to check the carbonation after it goes into the keezer.

Yes, I do but it on CO2 while its cols crashing in the keezer but it is pretty minimal.

I do it this way now after finding the 5 day sweet cider thread and is sure is yummy! My own personal adds are 2 pounds of brown sugar simmered in 1/2 gallon of the apple juice along with 3 cinnamon sticks and 1 teaspoon of real vanilla extract. It smells and tastes like apple pie when bottled.

It does age well but has to be refrigerated when bottled or the yeast (very small amounts) will overcarb the bottles. The dishwasher pasteurization process works great to kill the yeast off but the temp rise does change the delicate flavors some.