14 month old still cider HELP needed

[Airbus320]

Hello new member here seeking help, and advice. I made 55 gallons of hard cider/wine in November 2015. Since then I have racked it 3x in first 6 months. Then month 9 I bottled 6 gallons. It was super dry with an amazing apple smell, but alais I don't like it too dry so I started experimenting with Splenda and tiny amounts of sugar.
But I got no idea how much sugar is safe in 12 oz beer bottles. Everyone says flavor it to your taste... but I'm really looking for some numbers for a MED sweet.

I need additional help as after month 9 I got busy with life and my my cider/wine grew a film I can only guess my bubblers allowed to get to low. it still smells amazing super appley no vinager smell. How does one seperate this? Or did I lose year of work. It sits quietly in a 50-60 degree dark cellar. Its really my first time making cider or wine. So any suggestions on where to go from here is helpful. I have a capper and a corker

I have all the brewing details for each batch including yeast used hydrometer reading before and after amount of sugars added etc.
I hope it's not all lost.

I'll try to add some photos of the film on the still cider for you all to tell me what it is.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Airbus320 - and welcome. I may be confused but if you want a sweeter cider then there should be no problem adding however much sugar you want without any fear of bottle bombs BECAUSE you will have neutralized or removed all the yeast FIRST. If you have a concern about the yeast producing CO2 when you now add sweetener that means that you are not in fact aiming for a sweet cider but a cider with MORE alcohol. OK - so how do you neutralize the yeast? You stabilize the cider by a) allowing it to age (as you seem to have done) racking off the lees as appropriate (this also helps remove the yeast) and then you add K-meta WITH K-sorbate. At that point you can add as much sugar as you want.
How much sugar to add? You need to bench test. Pour three or four small glasses of cider at a known volume. Add different but known weights of sugar to each glass , mix thoroughly and taste. Repeat if none are near the sweetness you are looking for. If one glass is not sweet enough and one is too sweet then repeat but use those two amounts of sugar as your bookends. When you determine precisely how much sugar you want to add to a glass you simply divide the TOTAL volume of your cider by the volume of the glass you poured and MULTIPLY that number by the quantity of sugar you added to the glass.

Cannot say how sweet you like THIS cider - it may depend on how sweet you like your wines AND how tart the cider is AND how alcoholic it is.. BUT 4 oz of sugar added to a gallon of dry cider will raise the gravity by 10 points and a gravity of 1.010 is semi-sweet. Six ounces of sugar added to each gallon will raise the gravity 15 points and a wine of 1.015 is sweet. Hope this helps.
Looking at your photos. There is an enormous amount of headroom in those carboys. You really want to age any wine (including cider) with the liquid up into the neck of the carboy. Your cider is asking for oxidation and /or being transformed into vinegar. Not sure what the surface material might be - mold? but assuming the whole batch has not been infected all you do is rack from beneath the surface . Good luck.

 

[Airbus320]

Thanks for the great info, and the time that reply took. I did some sampling and of the 7 jugs I reracked 5 smell like they have a touch of vinegar so I guess lesson learned set a racking schedule stick to it. And bottle, bottle, bottle. This was my first go they were doing amazing I was super conscious about cleaning everything that went in yes the reracked over time gave me way too much headspace that I know understand. And leaving it so long allowed a period of time that some air locks dried out/failed. Many lessons learned!
I had a bumper crop of apples in 2015 so it's not like I paid for all that. It's gonna be hard to pour it out. ��

 

[bernardsmith]

Bottling should not be done too soon. Cider ain't beer. What you want to do is bulk age in smaller carboys or find some way to fill the carboys right up into the neck - Bulk aging IMO allows more of the products of fermentation to be transformed into more desirable products - including the transformation of some of the malic acids in the cider to become less harsh lactic acids (71B yeast is masterful at that. NOT an MLF bacterial process but a process that this yeast does on about 40% of the malic).

 

[Vrishnak]

Found something out recently on these forums to use the glass marbles from art supply stores that they use for floral arrangements to bring the level of your cider to the neck of the car boy without adding additional water/juice. I am going to start using that to help, thought it might be a good tip here for Airbus.

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

Looks like you've picked up some kind of infection. Since you say it still tastes good, if it were me, I'd transfer by racking from underneath the film into a new carboy and add potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite to knock down whatever is growing in there. It won't reverse any flavours that may have been developed but, unless I'm mistaken, it should stop any worsening of flavours. You can then backsweeten as much as you like without fear of bottle bombs. Even with the two chemicals, I'd probably backsweeten and leave it in a carboy for a few weeks to make sure it doesn't start to referment before bottling...

 

[Maylar]

Found something out recently on these forums to use the glass marbles from art supply stores that they use for floral arrangements to bring the level of your cider to the neck of the car boy without adding additional water/juice. I am going to start using that to help, thought it might be a good tip here for Airbus.

That was one of my tips. When I went looking for "marbles" in toy stores, like the cat's eyes that we played with as kids, they are outrageously expensive. Vase filler stones are way cheaper, just be sure they're unleaded glass.

 

[MarkKF]

Vase filler stones are way cheaper, just be sure they're unleaded glass.

And have a smooth, non-porous surface.