first batch, a bit too sour

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bobwantsabeer

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Hello All,

New to the cider thing here, which is why most of us are here I would imagine. I've been a homebrewer for a while, but the wife wanted to try her hand at cider.

Long story short, here's where we are at and could use a little help. We purchased 5 gallons of cider from a local orchard. Non pasteurized, straight from the press. We heated it to 184 degrees to kill off most of anything that might be in it. Added 2lbs of corn sugar, pitched yeast and fermented in a bucket. It was a pretty vigorous fermentation for about two weeks, and we just transferred to a secondary to try to clear it up a little. (probably futile, but you guys would know more about that than us) While transferring today, we took a taste. It is pretty sour. She and I are both ok with that, as it fits our tastes, but we will be sharing with friends in about a month. We are wondering if during the bottling process there is anything we can do to sweeten it up a little. We assume adding sugar, but have no clue how much to add, or if this is a newbie no-no. We would appreciate any help.

Bob
 
Welcome. Adding sugar will only get the yeast started again so it wil probably not give you the results your looking for. I have always used wine conditioner to back sweeten my ciders. i add it to the keg to a little at a time until I'm happy with the tast. I've also heard a lot of people use frozen Apple concentrate I have never tried that so not sure on the tast.
 
Thanks for the timely feedback! We used a champagne yeast. We would also like it carbonated, and we'll be bottle conditioning. I'll check out that other thread.

Bob
 
Hi bobwantsabeer - and welcome. Heating apple juice will set pectins (think jam) so you are going to find some real difficulty clearing the cider. Best plan is to add k-meta to the juice if it has not been UV pasteurized by the orchard (here in NY, it is illegal to sell juice that has not been pasteurized and orchards pressing juice for cider makers will use light rather than heat for that purpose). Twenty-four hours after adding the K-meta (AKA campden tablets) the SO2 will have evaporated off and you can pitch the yeast.
A couple of points: apples contain a lot of malic acid and malic is a strong acid - once you have removed all the sugar there is nothing to offset that malic. Champagne yeast is not perhaps the best yeast for making cider. A yeast like 71B that metabolizes malic and converts about 40% of it to the less strong lactic acid (in the course of about 9- 12 months) results in a far smoother cider.

But one thing you might consider is to balance the acidity in the cider with some sweetness. You can do that by determining that the yeast has ceased to convert any residual sugars to alcohol - That means you have a stable and fixed specific gravity at each of three readings you take about 2 days apart. You then add some K-meta and K-sorbate in tandem (dissolve these in water first) and then you can add sugar. With the addition of these two chemicals the remaining yeast is unable to reproduce and unable to ferment the sugars.
What I might do is bench test to see how much additional sugar your cider "needs". Take three or four glasses of a known quantity of cider and add to each a known quantity of sugar - dissolve the sugar and taste. If the amount in glass 2 is too little , and the amount in glass 3 is too much then you bench test again, using quantities of sugar between the amounts you added to glass 2 and glass 3. You can then simply divide the total volume of cider you have by the volume in the glass and multiply the volume of sugar by that number to determine precisely how much sugar you need to add to the batch of cider.
The downside of this method is that you cannot then produce a sparkling cider - you have stabilized the cider and so all the sugar will remain as sugar. What you might do is force carbonate - as if this was a keg of beer...
 
Bernard,

Thanks for the very informative post. I think we would prefer to go with a sweeter, yet non-carbonated beverage. We have about 5 gallons of cider in the carboy. Is it possible to sweeten with Stevia? Is that even a thing? I'm wondering if stevia is a fermentable sugar in the same way corn sugar is. Just brainstorming here.

We also have a half ounce of Potassium Sorbate which if I'm not mistaken, will kill off yeast as well. The wife was going to try hard lemonade and I believe she was told that Potassium Sorbate would kill yeast, but that's the extent of my knowledge on the matter. If it does work that way, could we kill the yeast with that and then sweeten to taste? Thanks for any help.

Bob
 
Stevia - by itself is - I think - a non fermentable sugar (not fermented by Saccharomyces cerevisiae) but I don't know that you can easily buy sugars from stevia that do not also contain dextrose and dextrose , is I think, fermentable. Additionally, I have no idea what flavors stevia may add to your cider.
K- sorbate (the K is the chemical letter for potassium) will not "kill" yeast. What it can do is prevent a small colony of yeast from reproducing - but in a large and vigorous colony I doubt that K-sorbate has any significant impact. In other words, you are not going to be able to add enough K-sorbate to neutralize every yeast cell in a large active colony. (and in any event it needs to work with the addition of K-meta (AKA potassium meta-bisulfite AKA campden tablets).
The experience of others may be different but when I want to back sweeten I will have allowed the cider, mead or wine to age for 6 months to a year, racking the wine off the yeast every 60 days or so so that by the time I come to add the stabilizers (K-meta and K-sorbate) there are very few yeast cells in the liquor. I can then add whatever sweetener (honey, table sugar, maple syrup, apple juice concentrate etc etc ) that I want.
I recently heard from a professional cider maker based in the Finger Lakes region of NYS that she successfully "cold crashes" her ciders to remove even large colonies of yeast - but a) she lets the cider stand at temperatures below 32F for weeks, and then she racks the cider off the yeast that drops out of suspension and then she repeats this process several times. This she says allows her to produce a cider that does not need back sweetening as she is able to halt the fermentation in mid flow while there is still a significant amount of residual sugar in the cider. But her "secret" is the very cold temperature at which she "crashes" the cider AND the length of time she maintains those temperatures. A couple of weeks in your kitchen fridge will not do anything: once that cider is brought back to room temperature the yeast that will have remained in suspension will go back to fermenting any available sugar.
 
...I recently heard from a professional cider maker based in the Finger Lakes region of NYS that she successfully "cold crashes" her ciders to remove even large colonies of yeast - but a) she lets the cider stand at temperatures below 32F for weeks, and then she racks the cider off the yeast that drops out of suspension and then she repeats this process several times. This she says allows her to produce a cider that does not need back sweetening as she is able to halt the fermentation in mid flow while there is still a significant amount of residual sugar in the cider. But her "secret" is the very cold temperature at which she "crashes" the cider AND the length of time she maintains those temperatures. A couple of weeks in your kitchen fridge will not do anything: once that cider is brought back to room temperature the yeast that will have remained in suspension will go back to fermenting any available sugar.

I have successfully cold crashed and halted fermentation on every batch of cider that I have made. I do it in my house refrigerator. I think it is more dependent on the yeast used during fermentation than the temperature of your refrigerator. Although the closer to freezing the better. The process is laid out quite well in the sticky on this forum by CvilleKevin.

I have a batch of cider going now using Cotes de Blanc yeast and I think it will be ready for the cold crash tomorrow. I have never used this yeast before but I have heard that fermentation can be halted with cold crashing and using gelatin. All of my previous ciders have been made with either Nottingham, S04, or WLP002 and I have no problems stopping them in the 1.010 to 1.012 range. The last batch that I did last year was with Nottingham and after cold crashing, it sat at 65 degrees for two months with no further reduction in FG.
 
To answer your question about using Stevia, many cider makers use it.
Many also use Zylitol and some of the other sugar alcohols. If you can get liquid Splenda it is preferred to the granular type which does contain some fermentable sugars and will potentially over carbonate your bottled ciders. Here is a link you can use for Splenda:
http://www.splendaprofessional.com/comparesugar
 
Thank you all for great feedback. I'll go through it and make a decision with how to proceed. Thanks again!

Bob
 
If you are going to use stevia as as sweetener make sure to use stevia in the raw. It contains a mixture of stevia and maltodextrin. Both are non fermentable and the mixture of the two will not leave an after taste. Just combine the desired amount and water to a pot and boil to make a simple syrup and let cool. Splendid contains aspartame which gives the off flavors associated with artificial sweeteners.
 
I like Erythritol, it won't ferment and tastes close to table sugar, but a little less sweet. It is a sugar alcohol but is more bio available so it doesn't cause the gastric distress some of the others are famous for. Truvia has been gaining popularity as well which is a blend of Erythritol and Stevia. I'm not a big fan of Stevia's aftertaste though.
 
That's the thing with sweeteners other than sugar. Different sweeteners taste differently to different people (see what I did there). That's the main reason to try small scale testing by the glass to see if you like the taste. I have been a chef 20+ years and have been fortunate to have access to a wide variety of ingredients from around the globe. But nothing beats advice from someone who has already tried the ingredients you are thinking about using.
 
I made a batch of cider a couple of months ago and fermented 4 gallons with some 1056 leftover from a batch of pale ale, I then kegged it and added 4 crushed campdon tablets and let that sit for 24 hours then I added another gallon of juice to back sweeten. It was just slightly tart with a mellow sweetness. It was the best cider I have made and I will follow that same method on the up coming batches.

I did it this way because I don't like the way artificial sweeteners taste, I might try this method with sugar also.
 
Stevia is not an artificial sweetener it is an extract from the Stevia leaf. It is a natural sweetener just like cane sugar, beet sugar and corn sugar. It is about ten times sweeter than regular table sugar so it must be mixed with other fillers to make it easier to use. In some cases it is the other ingredients that sometimes give an off flavor. Stevia in the raw is mixed with maltodextrin which is a common brewing ingredient used to increase mouth feel and head retention.
 
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Another option for future batches as well would be to use S-04 yeast for cider making. It is not a highly attenuative yeast and left me with a pretty sweet profile. To the point that I had no need or want to sweeten it any
:mug:
 
Another option for future batches as well would be to use S-04 yeast for cider making. It is not a highly attenuative yeast and left me with a pretty sweet profile. To the point that I had no need or want to sweeten it any
:mug:

What were your O.G. and S.G.?
 
That's the thing with sweeteners other than sugar. Different sweeteners taste differently to different people (see what I did there). That's the main reason to try small scale testing by the glass to see if you like the taste. I have been a chef 20+ years and have been fortunate to have access to a wide variety of ingredients from around the globe. But nothing beats advice from someone who has already tried the ingredients you are thinking about using.

Amen, chef. Great example.
 
Hi there, I just recently bottled a batch of cider I made using EC1118, I noted the same sour taste after 2 weeks primary, then racked to secondary for 3 weeks. I was pleasantly surprised that after 3 weeks in secondary, it had smoothed out nicely. I bottled my batch 2 weeks ago, and had about a pint leftover that I drank. It was delicious, and smooth. I used Xylitol to sweeten & Dextrose to prime. I'm looking forward to cracking the first bottle in a couple of days!
 
Gonna ask the obvious, any chance it's infected and on its way to begin vinegar?
 
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