Probably dumb cider/preservative question

So I've been brewing beer for about 2 years now, and it pretty reliably comes out ok, but when I try to do cider (I know a lot of people who like it more than beer so it would be a nice gift) it's always WAY too yeasty.

I've only tried one 5gal batch, this was when I was just starting, and didn't document what I was doing very well.

I've been trying 1gal batches, since they're cheaper to mess up (organic juice is like 10 bucks/gal where I live), just buy 1 gallon in a glass carboy from whole foods, pour it into a clean pot, pitch the yeast, pour half back in, shake to oxygenate and pour in the rest. Trouble is with such small volume, the trub takes up a significant proportion, and it can be hard to leave all that behind.

This last time, to try to prevent the yeast from growing in the bottle, I siphoned out the trub first (waiting after for it to settle), then left a LARGE margin above the bottom behind, and filled the difference with fresh cider, since I needed sugar to carbonate with anyway.

Ended up with the usual 1/4 inch of trub in each of my bottles. And cider that tastes like a gueuze, even if I just try a sip from the top. Pretty alcoholic, so if I can just make this taste like fruit, I'm probably ok. (fair warning, I'm using bread yeast. I figure I'm not splurging on cider until I'm sure I can make something halfway drinkable. I'd expect if you do it right you can get at least a C+ out of whatever yeast. I'd probably like to try the natural apple-skin yeast if I ever get it)

Now, I remember reading on this board that sorbates don't KILL yeast, they just impede their reproduction.

That gave me the idea to try this again, but when I add my carbonation sugars, to do it with *preservative* cider. The proportions would be way low, probably 1-4 or 1-5 in favor of no-preservatives, but it might prevent the yeast from growing in my bottles, while still eating the sugars. Would this work, or am I off base?

Other than that, any advice?

At the very least forcing myself to choke down what I've made is giving me a taste for gueuze.

 

Cider ain't beer. You need to wait for all the fermentable sugars to ferment and that may take about a month. You need to use an hydrometer to measure the final gravity and all other things being equal that will be below 1.000.
If I were you I would not remove what you call "trub" - with cider it is lees - until the gravity falls to around 1.005 and you then rack the cider off the lees into a sanitized carboy. You then allow the cider to age gently until no more sediment drops out. The sediment probably contains a great deal of the flocculated yeast and hence the taste.
Others may disagree.

 

+1 bernardsmith

Racking into a secondary fermentation jug and allowing your cider to clear will go a long way to removing the yeasty taste from your cider. Your sorbate idea isn't a bad one though, as long as you remember that it might take a lot longer to get the carbonation you want.

 

lalvin ec-1118 .......... it costs less than a buck, ditch the bread yeast.

http://www.biyhomebrewsupply.com/products/ec1118

Super-Kleer K.C. ............... clearing agent it costs 3 bucks
(this is an amazing product btw)

http://www.biyhomebrewsupply.com/products/superkleer

you can use a store bought pre-pasturised juice, if you dont have a hydrometer just wait 1 full month after yeast pitching before racking....the clearing agent you will use just prior to racking. That yeast strand will take the cider to DRY so you will either want to back sweeten OR just overload the yeast by adding massive amounts of sugar......see the recipe in my drop down for an easy but good cider that will definately get people drunk.(i'm considering watering some of it down to lower the abv & make it more similar to something like angry orchard[watery])

 

Thanks guys,

So I have racked into a secondary, that didn't seem to help matters, although the two fermentations were definitely less than a month (slightly less than 2 weeks per). I can wait longer on the next one, see if that helps.

As for the sorbate, it looks like it will be longer whatever I do, so it might be worth it just to save money on juice, and guarantee I've retarded the growth.

I'm not super concerned about clearing my cider, it's already a pretty clear yellow, and even if it came out the same opaque brown color that went into it - but tasted right - I wouldn't care. Does the clearing agent help pull suspended yeast out of the cider?

And as for the bread yeast, like I said, I'm just in the prototype stage, once I can be sure I can clear the yeast out, I'll start sending away for the good stuff.

So the takeaway procedure, if I read this right is:

pitch:
wait 1 month
secondary:
until sediment drops out (probably 2 weeks? not sure how I'd keep an exact measure of the height of the lees)
Bottling:
hit it with the clearing agent
2 days later add sorbate cider (I siphon it from bottle to carboy, with the outflow at the top, so as not to stir up the bottom) and bottle.

Yea?

 

First I agree with paps, wine yeasts are cheap. If I have a neutral ale yeast cake available I'll usually use that when it comes time for cider, otherwise I use champagne yeast. Last time I bought bread yeast it was $1 for 3 packets, ec1118 is $1 for one, $0.67/batch, or $0.07 per bottle with a 1 gallon batch. It'll help tremendously with the yeasty taste. The only place bread yeast is appropriate is JAOM (I still prefer a 14% tolerance wine yeast) or hooch (I'd be more inclined to experiment with wild/spontaneous fermentation myself)

I don't know if I'm interpreting your process right or not, but it sounds like after fermentation you'll rack and dose your cider with sorbate, wait a day or two, then bottle using cider w/preservatives.

Your 1:4 or 1:5 ratio sounds like a recipe for disaster. I'm assuming this means 20 oz of cider w/preservatives to top off/prime 100 oz of fermented cider. Either you'll end up with the preservatives being the type that can prevent further fermentation and you'll get flat but back-sweetened cider.

Or with the amount of sugar in most cider (1.040 - 1.060 SG from my experience) you are adding at least .07 gravity points in fermentable sugars, which way too much and will likely lead to bottle bombs. The only saving grace being if your sorbate actually prevents the yeast from reproducing and you have few yeast fermenting the priming sugars, they will ferment them a bit slow, and with only 10 bottles you are likely to drink them before they cause a problem.

 

I don't have access to pure potassium sorbate (perhaps it's available, I never have used it)

I meant that I would take about a quart (so, yea about 32 oz) of store-bought, preserved cider, and add it, in the hope of keeping any more yeast from growing in the bottle, but still fermenting what's there.

This batch was definitely too carbonated - unpleasant to drink until you let it sit in the glass for a minute - but nowhere near the first batch of beer I ever made , which actually tore the swingtops off the grolsch bottles when you opened them.

So it sounds like realistically, the only practical solution is to just ferment slower, and cold break.

Also, I don't know who buys bread yeast by the packet. Fleischmann's sells jars that hold the dry equivalent of 20+ packets for like 2 dollars. And it's also mostly for logistical reasons. When I decide to try to make cider (again, this is more of a science experiment than an art project at the moment, all I want is bare minimum drinkability, then I'll worry about overtones and undertones etc.) I don't have to plan ahead and send away for a proper yeast (no brewshops in my area), I just walk up the street, grab some juice, and dump in the yeast I already have in quantity.

I have tried champagne yeast when I first started but the results were more or less the same, plus a gross peppery spiciness - it almost burned the back of your throat when you swallowed. I'd assumed that champagne yeast (Red Star, at any rate) and cider weren't a good match for each other.

Anyone have any idea why/how champagne yeast could end up Tabasco-ing a cider, and how to prevent it?

 

Agreed. Bread yeast doesn't floccing well. Grab some wine yeast. My go to is ec1118. And ferment it in the mid to low 60s if you can.


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Hi Yooper, I assume - and I may be very wrong - that byrnsey means that if the store bought apple juice is preserved with sorbates then adding that juice to the cider will prevent further fermentation. The problem is, though, as you know, that sorbate will NOT prevent fermentation in an active yeast culture. It will only inhibit reproduction of the yeast when there are a handful of cells not millions of them. In fact adding K-sorbate to an actively fermenting wine or cider will do nothing to slow or stop fermentation. Best practice is never to add sorbate until the cider has cleared and there are no viable yeasts actively fermenting the sugar. Indeed, many people will look for three identical hydrometer readings over a few days before they think about stabilizing their wines or ciders