help! My cider keeps getting infected.

I've made several batches of cider and each comes out the same: smelling and tasting like vinegar. Is this a sign of a bacterial infection? I always sanitize everything, but this still happens. What am I doing wrong?

 

Can you post your recipe? It helps trouble-shoot if we know what you're using - cider, sugar, what yeast, time, method etc.

 

What kind of yeast are you using? I had some come out almost vinegar with champagne yeast.

 

A bit more information about your process, especially with regards to your sanitation procedures, would be helpful in diagnosing your problem.

Recipe? What kind of juice? Yeast?


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One gallon of apple juice (nothing but juice)
One cup of brown sugar
One packet of Lalvin EC-1118

I used one gallons of water with a tablespoon of Easy Clean no rinse sanitizer and rinsed out the jug with it and then used the same solution to clean my bowl I used to activate my yeast, air lock, funnel, mixing spoon, and stopper.

Activated my yeast following the instructions on the packet, while that happened I pasteurized my apple juice and mixed in my sugar. Then i poured the mix into the jug, cooled it to room temp with ice water and then pitched my yeast. Both batches had about 4 inches of head space.

 

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that Easy-Clean was a cleaner, not a sanitizer as such.


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Is your juice not already pasteurized or are you using a freshly extracted juice? If it is a commercially produced juice, are there any additives/preservatives? If you heat it too much, you will activate the pectin. If I'm using fresh juice, I add pectic enzyme and a campden tablet along with the sugar. Let it sit 24 hours and then pitch the yeast (always sanitizing!). If it ferments out enough, I'll bottle and not bother pasteurizing. If I'm back sweetening or stopping before fermentation is done, then I'll pasteurize the bottles after they carb.

 

Store bought juice is pasurized, only reason to heat up the juice would be to get rid of preservatives. I by the big bottles at wal-mart no preservatives and don't have to worry. Maybe not enough contact with easy clean. I would go for something like starsans. If it is a vinegar it's gotta have bacteria in the cider.

 

Easy clean i just a sanitizer, not a cleaner. Try out some PBW cleaner. Soak it, rinse it, then sanitize it.

How long are you letting it sit in the primary before racking to secondary or bottling? Are you topping up with anything?

 

Try fermenting right in the carbohydrates and do one rack into bottles.

 

I don't think heat is going to remove preservatives. I buy Murray's Cider; it comes in a half gallon glass carboy, it has no preservatives and it's made from whole apples sourced from Virginia and West Virginia. There is no added sugar and it's pasteurized. I use Starsan...it is a no-rinse sanitizer. I prepare and sanitize an airlock. I sanitize around the bottle cap, a pair of scissors, a glass measuring cup and spoon and a package of s-04 yeast. I rehydrate 6 grams of the yeast in a little room temperature bottled water, add it to the cider and put the lid on and shake to incorporate the yeast and some oxygen. Replace the cap with the airlock. Allow to ferment for several days and settle. Rack and settle another day. FG will be around 1.006 to 1.007. Bottle and age at least 30 days. Should have a little carb, but not enough to worry about bottle bombs or pasteurizing. I call it Murray's Super Easy Cider.

 

The only thing that I would add is that Campden tablets suck. Get some K-Meta powder and a scale.

 

I dislike campden because it takes forever to dissolve, even after crushing it between two spoons.
I bought an Ohaus precision triple beam balance at a yard sale years ago for like $5, but one can pick up a digital scale on ebay for about $10 or so. Makes it easy to add the requisite .44g/gal of k-meta. Campden made sense before the advent of inexpensive digital scales.

 

All of my cider batches have been 1 to 5 gallons and I've never had a problem with campden tablets. I do use a clean mortar & pestle to crush them...easy!

 

Make sure you are sanitizing and sterilizing effectively! Vinegar is caused by a common microbe called Acetobacter, and proper sanitization and sterilization procedures can help avoid this. Also, Acetobacter is a obligate aerobic organism, (i.e.-it cannot survive in the absence of oxygen.) Once you see evidence of CO2 production in the carboy, this means that saccharomyces has metabolized all the free and dissolved oxygen and is now breaking down sugar to breath-it also means the environment is absolutely inhospitable to Acetobacter. From, then on-RESIST THE URGE TO OPEN THE CARBOY!!!

Good luck, from a fellow cider maker.

 

Once you get your infection issue under control, I'd strongly recommend moving away from the wine / champagne yeast and going with a beer, or even better, a cider yeast.

 

I agree...check out the Cider forum...you will see one member has done some pretty extensive experimenting:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/results-juice-yeast-sugar-experiments-83060/

 

Thank you all for the advice! I've got a bottle of San Star coming in the mail, and I'm going to start from there. I'm still very new at this, I really appreciate all the advice!

 

First of all, make sure you are properly sanitizing all equipment (note: by definition, SANITIZING is killing of microbes in a active state. STERILIZATION is the killing of all microbes in a active or inactive{i.e.-spores.} state. Personally, I sterilize all my equipment-though sterilizing a carboy would prove a bit difficult. Also, REMEMBER that vinegar production is caused by a microbe called Acetobacter. Take it from one who brews hard cider exclusively, and therefore has researched the topic extensively: Acetobacter is an obligate aerobic organism, in other words it cannot survive without oxygen. With that in mind, monitor your carboy-once CO2 production is evident that means saccharomyces has metabolized all the O2 dissolved in the cider and has begun to break down the sugar in order to survive. This means the environment is OFFICIALLY ANAEROBIC. From this point on, resist the urge to expose the cider to room air.

Hope i was able to help,
sincerely-moondawg.

 

This is where I do a lot of one gallon experiments. .im using red star pasture champaign yeast..now I can usually get signs of fermentation within hours of pitching the yeast..now my questions start wondering to airation and degrading schedules...oh all those things that make you go hmmmmmm

 

Dang spell check..I ment degassing

 

Why degass? Cider only has simple sugars so yeast can break it down in an anaerobic environment and you don't have to worry some buggies.

 

Are you going to serve it still or carbed? De-gassing is only necessary if you are going to serve it still. Time will degas it eventually.

 

I usually mix it up a bit..thats the fun of one gallon batches.Some I carb up some I cold crash and pour right out of a gallon jug..Most of the stuff I carb is meads and melomels. I do those in 5 gallon batches..I haven't brewed any beer yet..I have everything to do it but storage is a premium with 48 bottles of skeeter pee on the shelf,5 gallons of peach melomel in the secondary, 5 gallons of mead in one gallon batches testing various recipes, and a gallon of cyser and hard cider brewing in the primary.

 

I was reading in a forum on another sight about degassing up to the 1/3 break to eliminate co2 and introduce more oxygen for the yeast. I guess its supposed to help build stronger healthier yeasts..I am going to start a test batch to see if it results in a cleaner brew or if I get vinegar. Plan is to make a simple cyser..one gallon of juice and a cup of honey tsp of nutrient and pitch red star pasture champaign yeast or nottingham ale yeast..

 

Test batch one..no degassing..og 1.080 red star pasture champaign yeast.

 

Good luck. Id never heard of degassing while wine making, so its allways a werid comment.

 

Degassing is done after all fermentation is finished, prior to bottling, to help in clearing, and to lessen the likelihood of pushing a cork out with temp changes. Red wine with a C02 bite isn't pleasant.

 

Interesting. Learn something new every day.
They typical cure for sticky fermentation with wine (that I know about) is to stir it with a copper pipe or splash-rack it.

 

Thats why I love one gallon brews..there is sooo much information to process sometimes trial and error is the best filter for bad advice...and I do enjoy a lot of trial and error. cheers!

 

I have made many dozens of batches of cider and never had any sort of infection. And my hygiene is not exactly what you would call thorough.

Perhaps your nose just doesn't like the smell produced by the yeast you are using. Try a different yeast. I recommend champagne yeast. And use nutrient if you want your cider to finish fast and not smell like farts.

 

Perhaps you are just fermenting dry your brew..

 

Yes champaign yeast is what I prefer..but I have only experimented with notty ale and red star champaign. .

 

You shouldn't splash rack after fermentation is finished, it will introduce a lot of oxygen that can cause it to oxidize, during fermentation, there is plenty of co2 to protect it.
A copper pipe should be used as a last resort.

You need to be proactive with wine, cider and even mead, you need to add yeast nutrients such as Fermaid K, Fermaid K is a blended complex yeast nutrient, it should be added over several applications to ensure that the yeast has the proper nutrients to continue fermenting.

Cider can give off strong rotten egg smells, even after following the proper yeast hydration and appropriate yeast rehydration nutrient, this last batch really smelled bad, but it tasted fine, and after I racked it after it fermented dry, it was fine.

If your cider, or wine develops a strong sulfur smell, there is a product that can correct it if you don't wait too long, called Redulees, click here, it's easy to use, dissolve in water, add to the wine and stir, rack off of it after 72 hrs.
It saved more than one batch of wine over the years.

I highly recommend contacting Scott Labs and ordering the Cider Handbook, it has more info on everything you'll ever need to know about making cider, the 60 page Handbook contains products, articles, and protocols specific to cider, from the basics, yeast hydration, selecting the right yeast, there are charts comparing dozens of yeast, to yeast nutrients, tannins and Malolactic bacteria.
It's free, you have nothing to lose! While you're at it request the Fermentation Handbook as well.

Contact:
Monica Royer
Marketing & Communications Specialist
Scott Laboratories, Inc.
[email protected]

 

I always pitch my yeast dry and toss in about 50g of DAP/nutrient mix. I've never had any sort of rotten egg smell except with the batches I fermented without tossing in the DAP/nutrient mix.

Without the mix, it takes about 6 weeks to go from 1.070 down to 0.998. SIX WEEKS! With the mix, it takes 7-8 days to hit final gravity and another 7 days to drop crystal clear.

 

I've only had the rotten egg smell once, but it was nasty...lol!