Carboy question

[TimBaker]

Hi Everyone Im new to making hard cider, my primary ferment carboy is a blue 5 gal water jug that is working great I scored a 6 gal. glass carboy for $4 @ Goodwill that I want to use for my first rack however I will only have abut 4.5 gal after siphoning it off. My question is Can I just leave the head space? Or does it need to be topped off? If so do I Add more cider? Marbles?
Any help is good help!

 

[Maylar]

Maybe rack to the glass carboy, add more cider, then rack back again to the 5 gallon when it's done?

That'd be a crapload of marbles.

 

[derrabe]

Just so I am clear on what your asking, you are going from a 5 gallon to a 6 gallon and after the initial fermentation you have about 4.5 gals of cider. I have only been doing this for a year but from what I have heard on here is especially on the 2nd rack/aging you want as little head space as possible. You have a few options to fill the gap, you can use a previous batch of cider to top of, you could add apple juice or FJC to fill the space (but this will restart fermentation). I have never heard of using a foreign object like marbles (except I have heard of oak chips for flavoring but not as a head space reducer). If you go the foreign object route you would have to sanitize the object first If you search around you might find other options for reducing the head space.

 

[physics911]

Cider is particularly susceptible to oxygenation. Keep the head-space as small as possible.

You can used sanitized marbles. However, not knowing the history of the carboy, use extra caution. The carboy may be perfectly sound, but it could have also been donated because someone set it down too hard, filled it with excessively hot liquid, or any number of other things which could compromise the integrity. Therefore, when you put the marbles in, they could cause a non-visual stress flaw to become a real crack.

 

[Maylar]

I use glass "stones" sold as flower vase fillers. They're pure silica glass and I go through the exercise of soaking them in one step, rinse, then star san. It works and it's cheaper than marbles but I only do it for small volumes. I've read that it takes about 700 marbles to fill a gallon of space.

I'd be inclined to rack to the 6 gal now and top up with more cider so that when you want secondary you'll have enough to fill the 5 gallon one.

 

[TimBaker]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I plan to add the extra cider, do I put a camden tablet per gallon to the cider before adding to the ferment?

 

[MarkKF]

In the future start with 5.5 gal. in the six then rack to the five with no headspace.

 

[TimBaker]

Just so I am clear on what your asking, you are going from a 5 gallon to a 6 gallon and after the initial fermentation you have about 4.5 gals of cider. I have only been doing this for a year but from what I have heard on here is especially on the 2nd rack/aging you want as little head space as possible. You have a few options to fill the gap, you can use a previous batch of cider to top of, you could add apple juice or FJC to fill the space (but this will restart fermentation). I have never heard of using a foreign object like marbles (except I have heard of oak chips for flavoring but not as a head space reducer). If you go the foreign object route you would have to sanitize the object first If you search around you might find other options for reducing the head space.

FJC = Fruit juice?

 

[derrabe]

Frozen juice concentrate (thawed out)

 

[TimBaker]

I got the cider siphoned off and added about 1.5 gal of cider and its working away again!