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Back in February I put forward the idea that including Fuji apples in cider because of their relatively high level of sorbitol (a natural sweetener) might be a way to end up with a sweet, carbonated cider without the need for pasteurising or artificial sweeteners. This is the outline of a trial...

At last, a result. I now have a batch of fully fermented sweet carbonated cider without having pasteurised or added artificial sweeteners. I will get around to a new post with the details, but for the 2K views and 39 posts that have been following this (where did you all come from?), briefly…...

Basically, the idea of adding campden tablets is the modern equivalent of burning a sulphur wick inside a barrel in order to kill off any nasties. Each tablet is a dose of 50ppm per gallon of potassium metabisulphite (or you can just add sodium or potassium metabisulphite powder). It fills a...

Thanks for that. It looks like a good product. Should be possible for someone to make a DIY version. Sadly, the vendor is EU based and the product isn't available here in Oz. At around $75AUD or $50USD it looks like a worthwhile addition to the war chest.

Here are pics of them in action today. It is quite straightforward to do... 1. Get a small pressure gauge (psi, bar, kPa). It doesn't really matter as long as you know what the pressure means. I found mine on eBay. 2. Get a screw on fitting to fit the gauge input. In the USA it is usually NPT...

Your two teaspoons of sugar have done exactly what they should. Plastic bottles need to have the cap very tight or they can leak... even flip top bottles can leak above around 80psi. I have a Grolsch "test" bottle with a pressure gauge fitted to the cap so that I can monitor carbonation...

Thanks for the feedback. I bottled mine last weekend and split the fully fermented S04 test batch into two (it is 40% Pink Lady, 37% Royal Gala and 23% Fuji). There is just a touch of sweetness, possibly from the Fuji since the FG is 1.000 but it doesn't taste bone-dry, although I have found...

Yes, trying to bottle condition and sweeten can be a bit of a mission. Rather than worry about on-line priming calculators, I use an alternative approach of adding sugar to increase the SG above the FG to generate the sweetness and CO2 volumes that I want. I don’t use a priming calculator...

A bit of a side story... There is an orchard in Victoria (one of Oz's southern states a few hundred Kms south of us as the crow flies), called Bellevue. Some years ago they were hit by a summer hail storm that trashed the apples from the trees. They decided that the only thing to do was to juice...

Up until this year I added DAP at the start, but after some research I now add it after primary fermentation if I think it is needed. I know there is a bit of debate about primary and secondary fermentation but I like Claude Jolicoeur's take on it by referring to the Turbulent phase rather than...

Yes, I wondered about the same thing. One of Andrew Lea's early observations about Fuji as a "miracle apple" was "It would be lovely if it were true but I really don’t believe it is. For one thing I think we would know it already!" Nevertheless, my "Engineering Brain" can't see any reason why...

Thank you everyone for your input. Interest in the sorbitol level of Fuji apples is getting bigger than Ben Hur! Following is a summary what I know, and an attachment with a bit more detail for those who like to dig into such stuff. While HBT is my favourite practical, hands-on forum for us...

Regarding different coloured ciders. I have exactly the same situation. Two trial batches, each with the same blend (Pink Lady, Royal Gala and Fuji) and the same amount of exogenous tannin powder. But, two different yeasts (71B and S04). The only other difference is that today the 71B has...

My experience with adding pears to cider has been just so-so. Although, I must admit they have been eating type pears. I have an old grafted beurre bosc/williams tree that occasionally gets swamped with fruit. However, I find that pears are hard to grind and press since you have to get them at...

Cool video (is this a pun?). Sorry, I was being a bit lazy using CJ as shorthand for Claude Jolicoeur. If you have access to his book, Chapter 15.3 "Ice Cider" covers it. My results were similar to his and also the video with the concentrate being bout 1/3 of the original juice.

Yep, I made the cryoconcentrate using the CJ method... pretty simple, just freeze the juice then let it thaw, dripping into another container until the colour has leached out, just leaving ice. It was 75% Fuji and 25% Royal Gala, just because that is what I had left over. The colour is the...

Good idea. My "test" batches have been bubbling away for about a week now. Looking forward to doing the same thing. My "controls" for comparison will be S04 fully fermented and 71B fully fermented. If adding my Fuji cryoconcentrate results in sweetness something like 10g/L of sugar (about 1/2...

It also occurred to me that if you started at SG 1.100, you might have chaptalized with sugar since most apple juice would have a SG of around 1.050 (110g/L of sugar plus 20g/L of non fermentable solids) Typically "good" apples would have 80-120 ppm of YAN which should be more than enough to...

I think your numbers are O.K. In theory you need to ferment a further 30 gravity points, so if your fermentation stalled due to lack of nutrients, you would need 10ppm of YAN (Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen) for each further 10 gravity points to be fermented. In practice this is done by adding...

I understand that more than 10g of sorbitol per day is likely to cause laxative effects. I guess that with Fuji apples typically having around 10g of sorbitol per kilogram, you would need to drink something like a gallon of Fuji cider to get around the 10g. Yikes, I imagine there might be a bit...