"The philosophy is that you want to sweeten until you are happy, then add the amount of carb sugar you need"
Echardcore
I'm sure your cider will be fantastic, the juice is likely from Pine Hill farm and last years blends are turning out great!
One thing, you can't sweeten to taste, and then add more sugar to carb unless you precisely measure the pressure being created and then stop the yeast by pasteurization at exactly the level of the SG that you back sweetened to. Without a pressure gauge hooked up to a test bottle this is next to impossible. Especially with 3 gallons worth.
It is very difficult to try this out first time. Essentially you are trying to guess when the yeast have eaten enough sugar to get to your desired carb level, then stopped them by pasteurization. Now sure, you can guesstimate and just pasteurize when the bottles feel firm, but you probably won't end up with the FG that you intended based on the sweetening to taste. - you might, but this would be good fortune and hard to replicate-
If you were just trying to stop fermentation at a desired sweetness without worrying about carbonation I you can simply taste the cider and then bottle and pasteurize when it's to your liking, but once they are bottled you loose the ability to take samples unless you open a bottle, and with just 3 gallons worth that's a high cost sample.
The plastic bottle never really got much firmer after waiting 4 days...I wonder if my yeast never came out of dormancy? There seems to be little to no carbonation at all. I had a feeling this might happen.
It looks to me has only been 8 days between bottling and now based on the date of your previous post. My cider took a lot longer than that to carbonate. I'd say it was about 3 weeks before the plastic bottles were rock hard. Both the original fermentation and carbonation were slow -- it was 38 days in primary before SG stabilized and no more bubbles were visible.
Wow thats a lot longer than what OP says. Mine was in the primary/secondary since November.
I just tried this and was maybe at 195 for the first batch. I had one bottle go kablooie and the caps on two others fly off. Second batch was at about 170-175 and was fine. Is that high enough to have done the job?
So I'm planning a carbonated hard lemonade. Can the pasteurization be done in a wine bottle? What would be the best type of closure for the bottle? The plastic cork with wire cage?
Very new to the carbonation process. Is the yeast nutrient and Lalvin EC1118 champagne yeast two different yeasts? One comes in a small packet and the other in a pound bag. It would take alot of packets to get 7 tsp. Thanks!
Kevin, yes, there is always sediment in the bottles.
Is there anyway to get past the sediment or even decrease it? I use Lalvin EC 1118 yesst. There is alot if sediment and doesnt look very appealing in the bottles. I did a hard lemonade and bottled in champagne bottles.
As long as you're carbonating in the bottle you'll get sediment. That's the yeast dying off after converting the remaining sugar to alcohol/co2.
The only way to get a sediment free bottle is to either bottle it still (after a lot of aging or using clarifying agents) or to use a keg and bottle from there with co2 forced in.
I toured Sociables Cider Werks in Minneapolis in April and started talking technical with the tour guide (one of the company founders) after the rest of the tour group moved on. When I mentioned bottle carbing and sediment he suggested filtering to remove yeast and inoculating with another variety that has a minimal amount of sediment. I can't remember the yeast he mentioned.
I brewed 3 gallons of cider using notty. I kegged it, back sweetened with apple juice concentrate, carbed it in the keg, and bottled it with my beer gun. I just pasteurized the bottles using this method. Worked great.
This, this, so much... this. I have my first beer kegging going on TODAY, after 3+ years of bottling. But even better than having beer on tap, I'm looking forward to keg-carbing my cider, filling bottles once it's clear, and dropping them right into the pasteurizing bath. ACTUALLY, I'm really looking forward to filtering as well, and hopefully being able to quit pasteurizing all together... but we'll see about that.
Page 1 of this thread says to bottle 1.010 to 1.014 so the cider is not so dryCuz you bottled them at 1.010
Page 1 of this thread says to bottle 1.010 to 1.014 so the cider is not so dry
yeah, but does Pappers then not say to add priming solution, so more sugar. I guess I added too much sugar? Should I just pour bottles back into demijohn and let the fermentation finish then back sweeten? I know it will make the cider stronger, but I have a lot of bottles and can't cool / drink them all!
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