Carbonation in fermenter

[Schecter]

Alright HBT,
I once again poured over the threads looking for an answer but I seem to be the only unlucky brewer out there. I'm making a hard cider and its on day 13 as of right now in my fermenter. I took it out to get a gravity reading, see how things were going, and I realized it was already carbonated a little. I understand this is probably because the airlock seized up, but is this necessarily a "bad" thing? Should it skew anything?

 

[Revvy]

No, it's not really carbonated, it has CO2 in it, it's not the same thing. The process of carbonation is when a large amount of co2 is forced into solution, via either force carbing with a keg, OR The yeast eat the sugar solution you feed them. They "fart" co2. The CO2 fills the headspace in the bottle (the one to one and a half inch dead space between the beer and the cap) CO2 keeps being generated,and it maxes out the headspace. So it has a couple choices...blow the top of the bottle (the cap) Blow up the bottle, or seek the path of least resistance and dive back into the beer, and get absorbed (carbonated) by the liquid. Since the cap is pretty tight (and ingenious in it's design) and most bottles don't have any flaws and can maintain the pressure, the gas more often than not, takes the third option and goes back into the liquid and is absorbed by it.

What you have is just a tiny amount of co2 in there from fermentation but not the same thing.

In fact wine makers talk about it all the time, they talk about degassing to release it. You need a very very tight place like a keg or a bottle and a lot of co2 farting/volume of liquid in the space in order for it to carbonate.

 

[Schecter]

Quite familiar with the process, but it literally is carbonated. As in I drank it and it was carbonated.

 

[Edcculus]

Rev, its probably just semantics, but I know what Schecter is talking about. It rarely happens in the beers I brew, but all of my ciders end up with a ton of "residual CO2". Usually enough that I'd call it very lightly carbonated.

Whatever we call it, yes Schecter, like I said above, my ciders end up like this too. I always want more carbonation, so I end up kegging or bottle conditioning.

 

[Yooper]

If you don't like it bubbly, there are a couple of things you can do. One is be patient- if the cider is only 13 days old, it's probably not even finished. As it finishes, there will be less and less co2.

In many wines, the airlock sort of "blocks" the co2 from coming out when fermentation slows and stops. That's common, so many of us use a step called "degassing". There are even tools to help with this- but it's not critical to have a tool to do it. Some gentle stirring with a sanitized rod will knock out the co2 and not aerate the cider. Warming it up a bit will work, too. So, if you have a place that's slightly warmer, just moving it there will sometimes degas it quite a bit. And lastly, time works wonders. If you let the cider sit for about 6-9 months, it will eventually degas quite a bit on its own.

 

[Aschecte]

Wow I'm jumping on this thread way late but I just happened to notice we have the same name at least schecter is my last name. I'm curious as to how a little time affected the cider. I just finished mine and it had the same condition after 14 days but after the full 6 weeks it was not " bubbly" at all.