Cider Help Appreciated

[bruhaha]

Ready to pitch my fresh pressed apple juice with WLP775. Juice had sulfites added at the orchard and has off gassed 48 hours. I will be adding a bit of yeast nutrient, pectin enzyme and setting the temp controller to 70F.

My biggest question involves racking. I'll be using a conical with a trub dump valve. Many recipes I have read say to rack from primary into a secondary to allow the cider to clear. However, since I have a dump valve, I am planning to dump at least a couple of times to clear the cider this way. For there, I'll transfer to kegs and adjust to taste.

Done the way I mentioned, what will be the general time frame I'll tie up my conical settling out the cider prior to kegging?

 

[dmtaylor]

Conical. Nice.

I would dump the lees off the bottom about every 7-10 days. Fermentation at 70 F might be done in 3 or 4 weeks, so maybe I'd only do it twice in that time. Personally I ferment cold around 55-60 F to preserve more aromatics. Takes longer but results in a better product. However I use wine yeast. Have not tried WLP775, which I see is recommended for 68 F or higher. Maybe worth trying cooler than 68 F to see what happens, maybe on a future batch.

Enjoy.

 

[MarkKF]

70 deg & yeast nutrients with commercial yeast you’ll be done in 4-7 days.

I get dumping the yeast but to really age & clear you need to top off or put in a smaller container to eliminate air space & surface area.

 

[bruhaha]

Conical. Nice.

I would dump the lees off the bottom about every 7-10 days. Fermentation at 70 F might be done in 3 or 4 weeks, so maybe I'd only do it twice in that time. Personally I ferment cold around 55-60 F to preserve more aromatics. Takes longer but results in a better product. However I use wine yeast. Have not tried WLP775, which I see is recommended for 68 F or higher. Maybe worth trying cooler than 68 F to see what happens, maybe on a future batch.

Enjoy.

Thanks, Dave. Off gassing has not yet begun (pitched two hours ago) so I went ahead and dropped the controller down to 68F. Your advice makes good sense and the temp of 68F is still in the range WLP suggests. I typically like to stay near the low end of the range anyway, so this makes sense.

70 deg & yeast nutrients with commercial yeast you’ll be done in 4-7 days.

I get dumping the yeast but to really age & clear you need to top off or put in a smaller container to eliminate air space & surface area.

My plan is to clear the cider as much as possible before transferring to keg for longer term storage and conditioning. With this method I typically consider my keg as a secondary, but I don't want tons of lees and yeast cake in the kegs. Hopefully I can clear the cider reasonably well in a couple of weeks with maybe 3 dumps...and the way I hope it works out is to move to kegs at day 14. I started with 12G so I got a couple of gallons of wiggle room before I get below 10G to fill the two 5G kegs. Like you mentioned, I want minimum headspace in the keg.

But the bottom line is to make sure I have reached FG before racking. If two weeks doesn't do it, no biggie. Not such a big deal with kegging, but I want to cider stable as possible before back end adjustments.

 

[bruhaha]

Conical. Nice.

I would dump the lees off the bottom about every 7-10 days. Fermentation at 70 F might be done in 3 or 4 weeks, so maybe I'd only do it twice in that time. Personally I ferment cold around 55-60 F to preserve more aromatics. Takes longer but results in a better product. However I use wine yeast. Have not tried WLP775, which I see is recommended for 68 F or higher. Maybe worth trying cooler than 68 F to see what happens, maybe on a future batch.

Enjoy.

Dave, just an update to ask your help (and others) if my fermentation looks like it is on track.

I pitched WLP775 into a 70F must that was an OG of 1.057. From what I've read, this OG is right about what we'd expect from fresh pressed and nicely ripe apples. After reading Dave's post, I backed down the ferm temp from 70F to 68F. I am getting very active fermentation off gassing, and the SG is dropping slowly as I hoped for. On Tuesday morning 48 hours after pitching on Sunday morning, my current gravity is 1.044.

As Dave suggests, it makes sense to control fermentation rate by keeping the fermentation temps low but within suggested range of WLP775. I did note the off gas aroma is very clean and not sulfur-like which I expected. Maybe the lower ferm temp is keeping the flavors cleaner? Does the rate of fermentation (SG drop rate) look reasonable?

 

[dmtaylor]

Seems alright to me. Gravity will usually drop very fast the first week, but begin to slow when gravity reaches the 1.010s. That's the point at which I watch my cider carefully if I care about maintaining natural sweetness. Sometimes I succeed (like this year), other times I fail (like last year) in which case I have to ferment it down to dryness which is below 1.000 and then backsweeten. Otherwise when possible I like to refrigerate the cider in the 1.010s so I don't need to add backsweetening. For better control over all this you can also add sorbate in the 1.010s which I prefer not to do, and/or gelatin which I am fine with. There's probably 1000 ways to skin this mongoose.

But yeah. Overall, it sounds like everything in your batch is going good. Personally when I saw gravity about 1.015, I'd rack it off and chill it down. But this is optional, and it will still turn out fine if you don't do that.