First Cider

[Ridgerunner11]

I pressed 3 gallons of cider last night from trees that are on my property. Not sure of the type but the unfermented cider tastes great. It has a SG of about 1.05. I added campden last night to kill any wild yeast. Tonight I'm going to add brown sugar, yeast nutrient, and the Nottingham yeast I acquired from a local brewery.

Now my questions. First, does this sound good so far? Second, how should I go about adding the sugar? My plan right now is to take some of the cider and warm it up slightly (not boil) to get the sugar dissolved. Should I use water instead? How much yeast nutrient should I use?

Lastly, my plan is to cold crash and transfer to my keg for force carbing. Should I also use campden to stop the fermentation or will the cold crash be enough?

Sorry for the overload of questions. I searched and couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Thanks in advance!

 

[Xhul]

Sounds delicious. And sounds exactly right, I think. I don't have a ton of cider experience but I have pressed my own cider twice and also fermented juice from local orchards. I don't normally add sugar because abv after 1.050-ish juice is fine with me. But, I have pretty easily just dissolved up to two pounds of brown sugar in room temp juice and it didn't take very much stirring. I like to do it that way so as to conserve as much of the apple aromatics as possible by avoiding heat.

About carbing and cold crashing, I guess it depends on if you want dry or sweet cider in the end and if you want it sweet are you able to keep the keg cold the whole time so that the yeast don't wake up again. In other words, if it ferments out to a dry cider I don't see any reason why you would need campden. In theory there is nothing else for the yeast to eat anyway. If you want it a bit sweet the question is whether you are okay with having more sulfites in there. I believe you could cold crash either when it reaches your desired gravity or backsweeten the dry cider to your taste and then just keep the entire keg cold so that the yeast remain dormant while you carb and then drink it. Of course you could also just halt fermentation at any point by adding campden, if you are okay with more sulfites in there.

 

[Maylar]

I suggest not adding any sugar. It will only serve to make the cider alcoholic and take longer to age. At 1.050 you'll get 6.5% ABV which is perfect for cider.

Campden does not stop fermentation. We use it with fresh pressed juice to kill bacteria and wild yeast. Do that now, and wait a day before pitching your yeast.

Rehydrate the Nottingham per instructions on the package. Pitch it into your cider and wait for the lag phase to end (when bubbles start). Then add your nutrient per package instructions (typically 1 tsp per gallon). Keep the temperature at or below 65°F with Nottingham. Trust me on that.

Normally when SG is below 1.010 I will rack to a secondary carboy and let it clear and finish fermenting. When you rack to the keg, another dose of campden will help it resist oxidation. If you need to stabilize for sweetening you'll also need potassium sorbate. Cold crashing doesn't always work.

 

[Ridgerunner11]

I suggest not adding any sugar. It will only serve to make the cider alcoholic and take longer to age. At 1.050 you'll get 6.5% ABV which is perfect for cider.

Campden does not stop fermentation. We use it with fresh pressed juice to kill bacteria and wild yeast. Do that now, and wait a day before pitching your yeast.

Rehydrate the Nottingham per instructions on the package. Pitch it into your cider and wait for the lag phase to end (when bubbles start). Then add your nutrient per package instructions (typically 1 tsp per gallon). Keep the temperature at or below 65°F with Nottingham. Trust me on that.

Normally when SG is below 1.010 I will rack to a secondary carboy and let it clear and finish fermenting. When you rack to the keg, another dose of campden will help it resist oxidation. If you need to stabilize for sweetening you'll also need potassium sorbate. Cold crashing doesn't always work.

I've been on the fence about adding the sugar and I think I will keep it out for this batch and maybe try a one gallon batch with sugar.

I added the campden last night so I'll be pitching tonight.

I only have one 3 gallon fermenter and my 3 gallon keg. Can I do all your secondary/finishing steps in the keg or should I get something to secondary in?

 

[Maylar]

I've been on the fence about adding the sugar and I think I will keep it out for this batch and maybe try a one gallon batch with sugar.

I added the campden last night so I'll be pitching tonight.

I only have one 3 gallon fermenter and my 3 gallon keg. Can I do all your secondary/finishing steps in the keg or should I get something to secondary in?

Fortunately, Nottingham is famous for its flocculating qualities (that word always sounds dirty to me lol). If you let it go in primary long enough it'll clear very nicely with a compact lees that's easy to rack off of. Especially if you use pectic enzyme up front. So, theoretically you can let it finish in the fermentor and then rack to the keg with campden and sorbate, sweeten and carb to your liking.

That said, we normally recommend that cider be racked to a smaller secondary jug and filled to the top to eliminate any exposure to oxygen while the cider finishes up and clears. You'll lose maybe 1/2 gallon to the lees when racking, so having a couple 1 gallon and a 1/2 gallon jug handy would be ideal. If you're gonna be making cider you'll want those eventually.

But I've let cider sit in primary for 3 weeks before and never had any oxidation issues.

 

[MindenMan]

To lose the minimum amount of cider and rack clear cider out there are a few different ways: add 2-part chitosan, stir and then chill overnight, or mix up a little Sparkolloid , stir and chill for maybe a couple of days or mix up some plain gelatin, stir and chill. All of these methods can be improved upon by slightly tilting the fermenter and making the lees collect (more or less) on one side of the fermenter and you set the racking cane on the bottom on the other side to also help not pick up anything off of the bottom. Or there is always the "it seems like forever" waiting to clear on it's own. YMMV.

 

[MindenMan]

I'm with Maylar on this one--don't add sugar to your very first batch of cider or you will really never know what you could have had. Six months in the bottle does wonders for the flavor of homemade cider. The more cider I make, the less I want to add anything to the next batch. We have close to 1-1/2 gallons of cider from apples my oldest daughter and I went and collected around the neighborhood. I am sure this particular batch's flavor profile may never happen again, but maybe next year if we really like this small batch we will do our best to do it one more time. I found out a few years back if I want some specific apples from the neighborhood, I will have to promise their previous owner some of the juice, and I am okay with that.
We are trying something new this year-- apple skin wine. I take the skins and pulp from the juicer (minus the seeds) add some bottled water, yeast and 1 cup of sugar per gallon. So far this experiment seems to be working. There is alcohol being made and the "juice" definitely tastes like apples. I had some small buckets laying around, so I thought, "Why not?"

 

[1bottlerocket]

I also would join the chorus of not adding sugar to your juice. If you do, I would not heat the juice, I would recommend dissolving the sugar in a quantity of water, letting it cool, and then adding that to the juice. I also would skip adding nutrient. I would consider this a mistake I made myself.

Although I have read in some books that recommend a starting sg of 1.060 to be ideal for cider making, I would think 1.050 is also a good beginning point. That was where my first juice was and it turned out well, if a bit dry. Te juice was a bit too acidic in retrospect.

There are a lot of opinions of when to rack to secondary. In the past I have racked after the juice has fermented dry with mixed results.

Also, do not add your yeast within 24 hours of adding campden tablets. I can attest from experience it is not the thing to do.

 

[Ridgerunner11]

I took the advice and decided not to add sugar. I pitched the yeast Friday night and it is fermenting well right now. Once it gets closer to finishing I will rack to secondary.

Thanks for all the good advice everyone!

 

[1bottlerocket]

You may want to think about racking earlier to slow down fermentation. Perhaps try racking once the turbulent phase of fermentation has ended and the sg is around 1020-1030 or so.

 

[Ridgerunner11]

You may want to think about racking earlier to slow down fermentation. Perhaps try racking once the turbulent phase of fermentation has ended and the sg is around 1020-1030 or so.

Is that just to slow the fermentation down so it doesn't dry out too much or what is the reason to rack earlier?

 

[Maylar]

The cider won't finish any sweeter if you rack early. I always wait for 1.006 - 1.008 to rack to secondary. By the time it's clear there will be very little lees in the carboy.

 

[1bottlerocket]

Is that just to slow the fermentation down so it doesn't dry out too much or what is the reason to rack earlier?

According to the Jolicoeur book, cider makers are interested in long, slow fermenting times this turns out the best ciders. An early racking would help slow the fermenting process down, combined with low temperatures.

In his example, the initial SG is 1.060 and the cider is racked at 1.034, which marks the beginning of the secondary phase. The external temperature is 10°C (50°F) and the cider ferments at a rate of 3-4 FSU, or lower over a period of a month. By the end of this phase, you may get some Malolactic Fermentation, which, as I understand it, reduces the acidic bite.

I cannot comment on this directly, as I have not tried it yet. This is my plan for the next batch. The fresh juice is on its way as I write so I will be bale to comment more directly as I get underway.

 

[Maylar]

I'm wanting to use Jolicoeur's methods too, but unfortunately I lack temperature control beyond what Mother Nature can give me. Not sure how slow I can go if I can only get down to 65F.

 

[1bottlerocket]

Luckily, I have a cellar that has a pretty consistent temperature. I have been tracking it throughout the year now and it has only varied by about 4° from summer to winter. I am not sure I can get as as low a temperature as he uses in his example, but 65° seems to be the upper limit of what he cites in his book.

 

[Ridgerunner11]

Along with my 3 gallon batch I have a one gallon batch that I'm planning to add oak and bourbon to make it a bourbon barrel cider. I never added yeast nutrient and when I racked to secondary tonight it had a strong sulfur smell. Will adding nutrient now help clean up the smell or is it too late?

 

[Maylar]

Too late.

 

[Ridgerunner11]

Is there anything I can do to get rid of the sulfur smell? Either aging or otherwise? I remember seeing something about it in a thread but I can't find it now.

 

[Maylar]

If you search the cider forum for "sulfur" you'll get a lot of hits, as this gets mentioned all the time here. People have tried various methods of dealing with it, some work some don't. Sometimes it ages out, sometimes not, depending on what caused it I guess.

Also search for "copper", because there are threads that say putting copper in the cider can absorb the sulfur.