Cider: back sweetening / aging

[vsusinga]

Hey everyone. I have a coupke of cider questions. After brewing several beers i figured id give cider a try, so i out together a small 2 gallon batch just to see if i could do it. This is a pretty dry cider
... Its actually reallly tart. I was wondering if anyone knows any good way to backsweeten cider without adding fermentables so i wont get bottle rockets. Also does anyone know if cider changes over time like beer does? Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Upthewazzu]

Well you have to add some sort of sugar to get it to carb up anyways, so you might as well back-sweeten with another half gallon of apple juice.

 

[vsusinga]

So i should use apple juice instead of priming sugar?.... How would i know exactly how much to use? I dont want bottle rockets

 

[caseymac91]

I'd say about 2 1/4 cups of apple juice to bottle prime 2 gallons. You could back sweeten with non fermentable sweeteners like sucralose, stevia, xylitol or lactose. Or you could back sweeten with apple juice concentrate and use the stovetop pasteurizing method. Check the sticky at the top of the cider forum. As far as aging, cider definitely gets better with time. Just like beer, it can surprise the heck out of you in a month or two.

 

[vsusinga]

Cool. Thanks!

 

[dranderson]

We do what I call 50/50 with our cider. Let the cider ferm all the way out. Then bottle in an easy capper style bottle with some dextrose to get it to carb. Then age for at least a month. When we open one we pour 50% cider to 50% commercial apple juice to back sweeten. Aging longer helps the flavor a lot, we just can't wait that long sometimes.

love this more than anything else we brew.

 

[MindenMan]

I too have found out cider gets better with age. I don't remember how much FAJC I used to prime that batch, but I got the calculation from this site. I would suggest using an empty soda bottle and one still full of soda. I didn't do it that way, using two bottles, as I was too concerned about bottle bombs. I only filled the empty bottle as a tester. It's been six months since I bottled the cider, and has gotten really smooth, and hardly tart.

 

[aryoung1980]

What I've been doing lately is adding simple syrup to my glass before pouring the cider.

 

[oljimmy]

I think some of the info above is slightly misleading. Obviously if you add sugars in order to carbonate, then those sugars will be fermented and show up as a smal abv boost, not as an increase in sweetness. You have to hope all the sugar doesn't ferment out, but without sorbate+sulfite the odds of that are low.

Anyway, this is (so far as I know) the #1 problem with making cider. If you're going to backsweeten you need to put the yeast to sleep, either by successive chilling and racking or by chemical addition. Both options are tough, especially since (in my experience) sorbate makes the cider taste like bubblegum.

 

[Pickled_Pepper]

The Surfin' Turnips

Don't mean to hijack a thread, but I had to say that I looked up the Surfin Turnips on Youtube. HaHa...good stuff! I grew up on ska and punk so hearing "Cider Commando" made me chuckle a bit. I've since moved on to bluegrass, but I still appreciate the music from my youth. Thanks for sharing!

 

[buzzno]

We do what I call 50/50 with our cider. Let the cider ferm all the way out. Then bottle in an easy capper style bottle with some dextrose to get it to carb. Then age for at least a month. When we open one we pour 50% cider to 50% commercial apple juice to back sweeten. Aging longer helps the flavor a lot, we just can't wait that long sometimes.

love this more than anything else we brew.

Doesn't this cut your ABV in half? I suppose if you originally make a strong cider or apple wine this would work ok but if you make a 5-6% cider to begin with I don't see the benefit.

 

[oljimmy]

Ha ha Pepper, yeah, there's a whole genre called cider-punk in the west country in England, based around the farmhouse-cider tradition they have over there. All the songs are about or feature cider and the gigs are mental, ha ha. Amazing place.