I Need some help with O.G. and Alc %

[jay075j]

Hey All -

I'm an experienced homebrewer and I have about 20 years of beer brewing behind me.

I made my first hard cider about 6 weeks ago, and I realized that I never took my O.G. I kind of got out of the habit as I am pretty good at hitting my targets with beer and well, I just plain forgot to do if for this cider.

Now I find myself with a total guess at where the heck I was starting from with this cider. Here were my fermentables:

6 Gal of clean local cider with an S.G. of 1.050
5 lb of dark brown sugar.

As I said before, it's been 6 weeks now and I am down to a S.G. of 1.000.

I have NO idea what my Alc % is. Can you guys help me with this?

 

[Pappers_]

When I plug 5 lbs of dark brown sugar into a 6 gallon batch in Beersmith, I get an OG of 1.038, so an estimate of your OG might be 50 + 38 = 1.083

 

[jay075j]

so by my guess, I should be around 11%? Is this normal for Cider?

 

[GinKings]

6 gallons at 1.050 OR 6 x 50 = 300
5 lbs sugar @ 45 points per lb OR 6 x 45 = 225

300 + 225 = 525 gravity points

The sugar addition increases the volume. I don't recall the formula, but I'd guess you ended up with 6.25 or a little more gallons

525 / 6.25 = 84 or 1.084

So, if it went from 1.084 to 1.000, then it dropped 84 points. 1% ABV is about 7.5 points of gravity.

84 / 7.5 = 11.2% ABV

I'm doing this quickly, so my estimate may not be exact, but should be pretty close.

 

[Pappers_]

There are many different types of cider, so its hard to say what is normal. Many folks make ciders like yours, with a significant amount of added sugar. What yeast did you use? A wine yeast, perhaps, if it survived an environment that high in alcohol.

You might put the cider away for now and age it for a while - being that dry and high in abv, it may need that. Or you could knock out the yeast and backsweeten it with plain apple juice to your tastes - it may still need to be aged. If our calculations of the abv are right, you're kind of in apple wine terrority. There is a giant thread here on Apfelwein (a german variety of apple wine) that alot of people here love - but it takes quite a bit of aging.

I also like a semi-dry, light, sparkling apple cider (akin to the draft ciders you can find, Magners, etc.) with only plain apple juice, pectic enzyme and ale yeast. That's a completely different animal, though.

 

[Mr_fleabite]

13.5 lb sugar = 1 gallon volume gain (according to the TTB)

so 5/13.5 = .3704

.3704 x 128 oz = 47.4 oz volume increase