Backsweeten cider with honey - process?

[Roadie]

I'm new to ciders (this is only my second batch) and have never used honey in any brewing capacity before.

I have a 5 gallon keg of tart cherry cider in the keezer. I had high hopes for it but when racking to keg added 1 lb of warmed honey (microwave) and a quart of tart cherry juice then racked the cold cider on top of it and the honey immediately clogged the dip tube. I unclogged that but what's pouring from that keg now is horribly sweet. Unsure if this is because the honey isn't mixed thoroughly enough and still at the dip tube feed point or what.

I know I'm not the first person to use honey to backsweeten but how do you mix it into the cider? The cider/honey/tart cherry juice mixture is similar to recipes I've seen in the past for Zombie Killer clones and I'm pretty sure those used 1 lb of honey to sweeten with.

It's a pain to dig the keg out of the keezer and shake it but is this my only option at this point? Should I let it warm up in the keg to get to mix better? Was 1 lb of honey way too much to attempt to backsweeten with?

 

[bernardsmith]

one pound of honey in 5 gallons of liquid will raise the gravity by .008. In my opinion (and depending on the ABV and acidity of your cider) that is quite sweet.
The only way to know whether you are drinking concentrated honey or an overly sweetened cider is to measure the gravity of your drink. If you know what the final gravity was and you know what it is now then you can tell if the honey has been well dispersed.
Best way to back sweeten with anything is to bench test...

 

[Fyrespinner]

I brewed a cider with organic apples and added brown sugar and molasses on initial ferment (White Labs English Cider yeast) I sweetened back with one apple juice concentrate (straight to the keg) then one pound honey and 1-32oz organic cherry juice. Topped off the keg, and shook for about 2-3 minutes a few times that day. (rocked the corney over my knee back and forth) Then put it on gas @ 25 psi, and shook a few more times to carbonate. Mine came out of the keg just fine. Now, the first few onces were cloudy, (guess the honey settled out some of the pectin? but after just the first glass, everything is clear and sweet, but oh so good. I took some to a gathering last night, and those who were drinking Angry Orchard set theirs to the side to have one of mine after someone flipped out about how good it was and that they had never tasted anything quite like it.
So, the answer to your question would be shake the keg for a few minutes.
(just my opinion, I'm sure a more experienced brewer may say other wise, but this is all about experimentation and there is really no right or wrong)

 

[bernardsmith]

The addition of honey to meads to back sweeten will also tend to produce haze. Not sure if that haze is coming from impurities in the honey or proteins or pectins... But you may need to allow the haze to clear - by aging or you could try adding pectic enzyme or perhaps bentonite (although bentonite works far better during fermentation as the CO2 will keep on bringing it back towards the surface before it gathers particles and falls back towards the bottom

 

[Roadie]

I fished the keg out of the keezer over a week ago and shook the bejesus out of it, rolling it around on the floor and then taking turns standing it right side up and upside down. I left it out of the keezer for a couple days doing the end over end turning in an attempt to more thoroughly mix the honey/cider. Then put it back into the keezer and now after a week not only is the cider very transparent it's not sweet at all. Now I think it will need to sit for a while and I'll taste it every month and see how it develops. If I decide to backsweeten with honey again I'll make sure to mix better over a period of a couple days before chilling.

 

[MarkKF]

any chance the yeast ate up the rest of the honey in the keg?

 

[Roadie]

any chance the yeast ate up the rest of the honey in the keg?

Good question. It doesn't taste horribly dry but it's definitely not sweet either. I don't remember the starting gravity after the initial fermentation, nor if I sorbated it before adding in the honey. If not, you're right being out of the keezer for a couple of days in a 60ish basement would have probably started fermenting the honey out.