How long can I store unpasteurized hard cider?

[dostafan]

Hi guys,

I havent found the answer here. I am about to make a first batch of homemade hard cider.

After the fermentation process is finished (I will leave it to get completely dry and yeast to eat all sugar in the apple juice) I plan to do 3 types:

1) Still Dry Cider - pour cider straight to the bottles
2) Sparkling Dry Cider - just before bottling I will add priming sugar so that it can do secondary fermentation in bottles and have some gas
3) Sparkling Sweet Cider - same as 2) + I will add some erythritol to add sweetness to the final product

My question is - after I proceed with the steps above, how long can I store these bottles? Are few months, up to a year ok even like this, without pasteurization?

From my understanding, pasteurization is not really neccessary, it would be only neccessary if I were to use normal sugar as a sweetener and wanted to stop the fermentation to keep the sugar in the final product, but that is not the case as I will be using erythitol, is that correct?

thanks!

 

[CKuhns]

Months to a year to store hard cider is just fine. As long as it is bottled and sealed well. For best results keep it in a cool and dark place. I have a few bottles I have set aside and plan to open one a year to see how they do. They are almost 3 years old and the last one i opened tasted real good at 2 years.

 

[Jacob_Marley]

Shelf life has to do with a lot of factors ... pH, sulfites, the amount of tannin, the amount of residual nutrient left in the cider (& filtration), exposure to light once bottled, oxygen getting in once bottled, oxygen introduced to the must before bottling and during handling, prior-to-bottling sanitation to avoid spoilage bacteria and infection, the temperature at which you store the cider and the changes in temperature while stored, and ABV% (!).
Ahh ... did I mention sanitation.

The max shelf life? If it has a comparatively high ABV (for cider) and reasonable tannin levels, I'd think the shelf life similar to wine ... though not many ciders are quite so tannic and quite so high ABV .
And, from my cidermaking ... my ciders never get the chance to age.

For preserving cider ... which, in a manner of speaking is a type of fruit wine ...
Cider, like wine, is best kept at cellaring temps with as little fluctuation as possible especially in long term storage ( more than a year or so ... and the longer, the more important it is) ... the variation should ideally not be more than about 5*F.
With wine at least, fluctuations have erratic effects on the maturation of the tannin and color ... and then also on the sugars and acids.
With both wine and cider however, fluctuations can just very slightly introduce oxygen past the seal as the wine or cider expands and contracts.
This is why wine cellars are underground where there is much less or no fluctuation.
So as mentioned, somewheres around 55*F if possible ... and consistent.

 

[Raptor99]

Shelf life has to do with a lot of factors ... pH, sulfites, the amount of tannin, the amount of residual nutrient left in the cider (& filtration), exposure to light once bottled, oxygen getting in once bottled, oxygen introduced to the must before bottling and during handling, prior-to-bottling sanitation to avoid spoilage bacteria and infection, the temperature at which you store the cider and the changes in temperature while stored, and ABV% (!).

Lots of good information here. If you adjust pH to 3.4 or 3.5 and add some tannins/oak, then with good procedure you should be able to store cider for a few years. I have kept bottles up to 3 years so far. In my experience the cider improves quite a bit by aging for 6-9 months, including time spent in bulk aging + aging in the bottles. Once it hits the 1 year mark I'm not sure it will improve any more. But others may have a different experience.

 

[cottonwoodks]

I don't really know anything about any of this, but I made a bunch of cider in 2020, and while other people seemed to like it just fine, I thought it was terrible. I had a bottle the other night (1 1/2 years later), and it was really good. It's been stored in the basement out of the light, but the temps do range over 20F over the course of the year.

 

[hawkwing]

Depends on the alcohol content and oxygen contact mostly. If you are in the 8%+ you should be good for a while.

Depending on your tastes #3 might not be worth saving. Artificial sweetener and all.

 

[chevalcider]

I am currently finishing a keg of 4 year old cider. It bulk aged for quite a while and I kegged it in 2020. It gets better with time.