Bottling question from a beginner

Hey guys! I'm making a quick 9 day Apple cider with Apple cider, white wine yeast, and sugar. I'm going to bottle it after the 9 days to keep. As this is my first time bottling, how would I bottle this to keep it carbonated? It's 2.5 gallons that I will put in to old Grolsch bottles and some wine bottles capped with tasting caps. Thanks for the help!

Mooseman923 said:

Hey guys! I'm making a quick 9 day Apple cider with Apple cider, white wine yeast, and sugar. I'm going to bottle it after the 9 days to keep. As this is my first time bottling, how would I bottle this to keep it carbonated? It's 2.5 gallons that I will put in to old Grolsch bottles and some wine bottles capped with tasting caps. Thanks for the help!

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If you bottle at day 9, without testing the SG to make sure it's done, you may have some bottle bombs. "Tasting caps" will not hold pressure, and neither will wine bottles.

If you want to have a carbonated cider, you must use bottles that can hold carbonation. Soda bottles, beer bottles, champagne bottles, etc, will work. But not wine bottles! If you're lucky, the caps will just blow off but if you're not lucky, the wine bottles will blow up as well.

How long would you say it would take for the fermentation to stop? It really doesn't have to be carbonated in the end.

Mooseman923 said:

How long would you say it would take for the fermentation to stop? It really doesn't have to be carbonated in the end.

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It can take one day or one month. It's so dependent on many things- temperature, the amount of yeast, the amount of fermentables, the strain of yeast, etc.

If you don't have a hydrometer to check when it's finished, it's best to let it go until it's clear.

Once it's completely clear, it's probably done. Not necessarily, but it is probably done if it's completely clear. That might take a very long time, though.

I'm sorry for all the newb questions, but how would I tell itIts done with a hydrometer? Also, I thinking actually going to juSt bottle as a still cider without carbing it.

The hydrometer shows the density of the liquid, and as "sugar-water" is more dense than alcohol, and the sugars are being fermented, then the fermentation is shown to have stopped when the hydrometer reading is no longer changing*. This should be read over 3 days, e.g. say it was at 1.008 on Friday and then still at 1.008 on Monday.

*It should be low enough also, e.g. a constant reading of 1.2 might mean that fermentation had stopped but that there was still a lot of sugar in there; this could mean the yeast are laying dormant (e.g. if it suddenly got really cold), so you wouldn't want to bottle yet, but rather raise the temperature back up and get the action going (there are other things you can do if fermentation is going slow but cross that bridge when you come to it!).