Added too much sugar before bottling?

[Bigspaghoot]

Super new to cider making,
Just finished fermenting some apple cider, left for 3 weeks in primary, I didn't use a hydrometer so unsure about gravities.

I added a 440ml bottle of 84g/100ml raspberry syrup to 4l after racking and bottled before I realised how much sugar was actually in there (packaging said no artificial sugars)

I was just wondering, everywhere I've seen says to use more than 10x less when bottling for carbonation, and a plastic bottle I filled for reference has become quite firm after only 2 days, however I'm pretty spooked about bottle bombs knowing how much sugar is in there, would carbonation go extremely fast with so much sugar? Tempted to just throw them in the fridge and just worry about carbonation on my next batch,
Thanks in advance for any advice!

Edit: for context the main goal was to sweeten and flavour the cider with carbonation as a lesser priority

 

[VikeMan]

If I read this right, you added about 369.6 grams sugar to what became a total of about 4.4 liters of cider. If so, you're heading for about 22 volumes of CO2. At room temp that's over 300 PSI.

With that much sugar and live yeast, I personally wouldn't even trust the fridge to keep it safe.

 

[Chalkyt]

Your numbers suggest that you have just added 92g of sugar per litre to your cider so it should be quite sweet at this stage. Have you tasted it?

In any case, even if it had fermented down to 1.000 after three weeks (i.e. the original sugar in the AJ had been converted to CO2 and alcohol), and if my arithmetic is correct then the added sugar would take it back up to around 1.035 so fermentation will have restarted since there will be plenty of live yeast left. I would expect you to still have quite rapid fermentation taking place with that level of sugar so the test bottle could get quite hard after just a couple of days.

You are definitely in bottle bomb territory if you have bottled now, so you need to release the pressure by opening the bottles. You could then reseal the bottles when the SG gets down to 1.010 by which time the excess sweetness should have been converted to extra alcohol (it might take a while to get down there), but fermenting the extra sugar on top of the original will probably result in a "robust" cider at around 10%-11% ABV. Heat pasteurising at 1.005 would then give you the bit of carbonation you were looking for. Or, just let it ferment all the way down to 1.000 with the tops loose, then seal and drink it that way. Sealing it when the fermentation has finished can often result in a bit of spritzig carbonation anyway.

Have a look at the file attached to my post of 1 February. It covers a lot of stuff about pasteurising and also has some good information from Yooper about kegging.

Good luck... we all have these types of adventure along the way.

 

[Bigspaghoot]

Mmhm I realised afterwards that it was super overkill, gonna stick to an artificially sweetened syrup with low sugar next time haha, I'm assuming potassium sorbate wouldn't work either as I've read that it only stops yeast reproduction? Think I'll just throw them in the fridge, open daily and drink them asap, thanks for the advice! I'll check that post out for sure

 

[Chalkyt]

Just keep an eye on the level of carbonation when you open the bottles. Once again if my arithmetic is correct, bottling at 1.035 or so and fermenting down to 1.000 (which in my experience can happen even if they are in the fridge) will result in something like 15 volumes of CO2 which is close to 250 psi... and that makes a big BOOM and a mess if a bottle fails.

 

[jseyfert3]

I'm assuming potassium sorbate wouldn't work either as I've read that it only stops yeast reproduction?

Correct, you can add sorbate and sulfite after fermentation has finished and you’ve racked clear cider off the lees. This allows you to use sugar to sweeten without allowing fermentation. Downside to this is that means you cannot bottle carbonate either, unless you force carb in a keg and bottle from the keg.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/cider-for-beginners.508303/post-6601715