another newbie

[kmenard]

It started with a desire to partake in an old mill town tradition, and will result in...well, I have no idea...but put it this way, in my first batch I made the mistake of putting the yeast in with the rest of the ingredients and bringing it up to 160...and then not realizing I had to put water in the airlock. :cross:

I added more yeast to that one after it cooled and we will see how it turns out...SG is 1.030 last I checked...but being totally new, I didn't check it to begin with.

For this batch I got a gallon of flash pasteurized local cider. Put about 6 apples in a vitamix mixer and made something that was the consistency of an apple smoothie. Added in 1/2lb of sugar, 1/4lb of brown sugar, a little agave, and a little honey. Threw in a small handfull of raisins and brought up to 160 in a white enamel pot before chilling it down to 70. Pitched a 1/4 packet of S-04 yeast in it and put the airlock on it...this time with water.

I took a couple readings and...if I am correct, which am not really sure I am...the alcohol content on this will be about rubbing alcohol.

...and then I found this forum

 

[kmenard]

I am curious...if anyone can help me with this...I would like to get some carbonation on this, so I was thinking to bottle condition the entire gallon. Can I put a cap on it at a certain specific gravity, or can I cold crash it at some point and then add a little sugar?

 

[agent44]

If you want it to remain sweet and be carbonated you can let it ferment dry and backsweeten to desired sweetness, bottle it and pasteurize in bottle when desired carb lv is reached, there is a sticky thread on this. Please read before trying because bottle bombs are a serious thing. You could also backsweeten with a non ferment able sweetener like Splenda. And then add some sugar in the appropriate amount to carbonate.

 

[kmenard]

I only did a gallon batch, so my hope was to actually siphon from the secondary into a 1 gallon carboy and cap it at 1.010. I think this is called Almost Exhausted Carbonation?

 

[kmenard]

I was all set to do the partial exhausted thing...checked my (musselmans) cider tonight...and it was exhausted. It actually tasted pretty good still, but I am going to try and carbonate it with bottle conditioning and the heat pasteurization.

 

[smegger]

Yeah, it may have exhausted its supply of sugar but there will certainly be plenty of yeast left to carbonate if you toss priming sugar in.