SmokeyMcBong
Well-Known Member
So, I started a batch of apple cider maybe a month and a half ago. It was some cider that a friend of a friend (who's a restaurant supply sales rep) sent over. Turned out it had sorbate in it. I put 2L of the sorbated cider in my starter vessel and pitched a vial of old san diego super yeast. Nothing for 2 days, could be the yeast was too old or the sorbate. I rehydrated a new pack of ec1118 and dumped that into the 2L starter and BOOM, it started fermenting in a few hours. So I figured it would ferment, I'd go ahead and make the rest of the 20L's.
The juice started at 1.045, fast forward almost a month and I was at 1.030 lol. It was fermenting and off gassing as well as looking like a normal fermentation and smelling strongly of sweet apples. So I snapped the lid back down and left it till yesterday (maybe just over a month and a half after pitching). I tested a sample of the cider and transferred to a carboy. SG was down to 1.010 and it smelled fantastically of apples. The sample is very something, I'm having a hard time figuring out if its tart or sour.
I didn't find anything like a vinegar mother or greasy bubbly skin on the cider. Its not clear yet but it looks like any other wine I've made (before the other wines clear). After transferring to the carboy, I've got a little krausen and a small yeast ring around the neck of the carboy. Its still off gassing and the cider still appears to be fermenting. I made a batch of crab apple wine last fall that didn't seem as tart as this is and the crab apple went to 0.998.
So, after all of that, what do you guys think? If it turned into vinegar, would I have ended up with a mother floating around in there for sure? Could it still have gone sour but not have any noticeable differences from a normal ferment? Or is homemade hard apple cider with no back sweetener so puckery as to be mistaken for vinegar? Or is it the presence of sorbate during fermentation thats soured it up?
Thanks in advance for any tips or advice...
The juice started at 1.045, fast forward almost a month and I was at 1.030 lol. It was fermenting and off gassing as well as looking like a normal fermentation and smelling strongly of sweet apples. So I snapped the lid back down and left it till yesterday (maybe just over a month and a half after pitching). I tested a sample of the cider and transferred to a carboy. SG was down to 1.010 and it smelled fantastically of apples. The sample is very something, I'm having a hard time figuring out if its tart or sour.
I didn't find anything like a vinegar mother or greasy bubbly skin on the cider. Its not clear yet but it looks like any other wine I've made (before the other wines clear). After transferring to the carboy, I've got a little krausen and a small yeast ring around the neck of the carboy. Its still off gassing and the cider still appears to be fermenting. I made a batch of crab apple wine last fall that didn't seem as tart as this is and the crab apple went to 0.998.
So, after all of that, what do you guys think? If it turned into vinegar, would I have ended up with a mother floating around in there for sure? Could it still have gone sour but not have any noticeable differences from a normal ferment? Or is homemade hard apple cider with no back sweetener so puckery as to be mistaken for vinegar? Or is it the presence of sorbate during fermentation thats soured it up?
Thanks in advance for any tips or advice...
