Adding fruit to my cider?

[ScouseKamp]

Hey, Everyone!

I just got a quick question about my 5 gallon batch. It is ready to go into secondary and I want to add some fruit for some great flavors. My question is, when I add the fruit do I also add some sugar? I would like to sweeten my cider but I am scared the fruit and sugar will cause it to “boom” because it is too much.

I did a 1 gallon batch recently and it turned out great with the carbonation and I’m hoping to get it the same way. Just adding the fruit is scaring me. Any advice would be great.

Cheers.

 

[Knightshade]

The yeast will pick up on the additional sugars in the fruit as well, which will contribute to the carbonation that you experienced with your first batch. Not sure if you're bottling, but I've seen recommendations to utilize a plastic bottle amongst your glass ones so you have a rough physical estimator of when carbonation is at a good level and you can choose to either refrigerate or pasteurize.

 

[jnesselrode]

Hey, Everyone!

I just got a quick question about my 5 gallon batch. It is ready to go into secondary and I want to add some fruit for some great flavors. My question is, when I add the fruit do I also add some sugar? I would like to sweeten my cider but I am scared the fruit and sugar will cause it to “boom” because it is too much.

I did a 1 gallon batch recently and it turned out great with the carbonation and I’m hoping to get it the same way. Just adding the fruit is scaring me. Any advice would be great.

Cheers.

If your original gravity was what you wanted I’d say don’t add sugar at this point. The fruit will probably add some, depending on what it is and how much, so that will change things somewhat.

When you’re ready to remove the fruit, take an SG. If it’s low and there’s not enough to carbonate, then add some sugar then. Hopefully someone can chime in and put a target SG for decent carbonation and /or back sweetening.

 

[Chalkyt]

Adding fruit is a "black art" rather than a science. You need to be able to remove the fruit when the flavour profile is right since too much can overdo it, so having the fruit in a steeping bag will help with this. Some fruit (hops in particular) float, so a means of weighing it down into the cider (and getting it out again) is useful. You need to judge how much extra sugar you need to allow for carbonation if that is also your aim.

Fruit can be great in cider, but sometimes it can be awful. 'You pays your money and makes your choices." My advice would be to get your techniques right for sweetening or carbonating straight cider before adding the complication of fruit. For example, something like blackberries can be a bit fierce if the sugar is fermented out, or hops left in for too long can overtake the cider flavour.

In your case, typically SG 0.004 -SG 0.005 is needed for carbonation (SG 0.002 ferments into 1 volume of CO2). Then you need further gravity points for retained sweetness, but you will have to stop fermentation at the right time because active yeast will just chew up any sugar. About 10 gravity points (from sugar) will give you the sweetness of a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee.

As an example, for a slightly-sweet carbonated cider (no added fruit), I will bottle at around SG 1.010 and hot water pasteurise the bottles when the contents are at around SG 1.005. This should result in 2.5 volumes of CO2 (i.e. soft drink or beer). Judging when to pasteurise can be a bit difficult but having some of the cider in a plastic bottle is a good way to judge (the "squeeze test"). My setup uses a "test bottle" fitted with a pressure gauge so I can measure when the carbonation is right.

Otherwise as a first step, just make either a "dry" fully fermented fruit added cider with sugar (about 10g or 2 teaspoons per litre) added for carbonation. or a "sweet" fruit added cider which is pasteurised to stop fermentation.

The search function at the top of the forum should lead you to lots of information about pasteurising or stopping fermentation (also read Papper's post at the top).

Have fun!

 

[ScouseKamp]

Hey, Everyone! Thank you so much for the advice on all the posts!

Here is where I am up to now: Racked my 5 gallon after 10 days into 1 gallon carboys with the added fruit plus an airlock. My GR was 1.010 at the time. It has been 2 days and there is still some fermentation happening for sure. One of the carboys (blackberry) has started to slow but the other 2 are popping every 30 seconds.

As I am brand new to the hobby I am extremely overwhelmed with the next step. And I would love some advice from you guys.

Shall I let the airlock completely stop and take a GR? If so, when would be the best time to back sweeten? I’m not sure if the fruit will make it more dry and tart and I do like a sweet cider. I am bottling so any advice to avoid the bombs would be great.

Thanks!

 

[Chalkyt]

As outlined above, any more than SG 1.005 (10g/L of sugar) will probably over-do the carbonation since yeast will keep gobbling up any sugar and convert it into CO2 and alcohol. The rough rule of thumb for carbonation is two teaspoons of sugar per litre. Much more than this and you will get volcanoes when you open the bottles.

If you simply add sugar for sweetening and don't pasteurise, the yeast will just eat this up and generate more CO2. So, if you had 10g/L of sugar for carbonation plus 20g/L (a teaspoon per glass) for sweetness, the yeast would use all of this to generate over 7 volumes of CO2 (120psi @ 25C... certainly a volcano and potential BOOM!)

So, the alternative is either pasteurise to stop the yeast at the right point or use a non-fermentable sweetener Xylitol, Splenda etc), but be aware that they can all have some issues like aftertaste, gastric effects, toxic to dogs, etc. Once again, the search option at the top of the forum will lead you to lots of opinions on this as some find that cider with these products is quite O.K.

Edit... whoops, corrected the psi for 30 g/L sugar turned into CO2