Backsweetening to balance acidity.

[DaveC73]

So, last fall I made a 3 gal batch of cider from some golden crabapples (golden hornet I think). The cider is now clear and smells and tastes great. There's just one little problem, the acidity is sitting somewhere between 12 - 14 g/L right now, so it's pretty undrinkable. I'm going to try balancing the acidity with some sweetness by doing some bench trials to see what works best for me.

Naturally I'd like to minimize the number of trials I'm going to do, so does anyone know of any rules of thumb for balancing sweetness/acidity? I could at least use this as a starting point and go from there. I'm not going for perceptible sweetness, I just want to tame the acidity.

Thanks!

 

[Chalkyt]

This isn’t super scientific, but it might help.

A couple of years ago I measured the SG, sugar, acid, pH of my apples to help with blending. The sugar is based on the SG according to Proulx & Nichols P47 which gives g/L of “sugar” rather than the usual “total solids” (total solids are usually called “sugar” in most other publications).

Actual sugar (i.e. the bit that does the sweetening) is generally about 80% of the total solids. Claude Jolicoeur’s table 8.8 gives a good breakdown of this (e.g. for SG1.050 CJ has total solids of 130g/L made up of 107g/L of sugar and 23g/L of other solids like acid, tannin etc, etc). Of course, these are average figures and probably vary a bit from apple to apple and year to year.

Anyhow, the point of all of this is that my apple figures might give you a guide to how much sweetener to add. The “sharps” are generally pleasant to eat even though the acid is above 10g/L. They have more sugar/L than the “sweets” which have less than 5g/L acids but lower sugar also.

So, these apples all taste O.K. because the sugars and acids are naturally in balance, which I guess is what you are looking for. Just eyeballing the numbers, you might find some useful ratio between sugar and acid. With the sharps, it looks as though a ratio in the order of 10:1 sugar to acid g/L is sort of normal for the unfermented juice. However, I have a straight Pink Lady cider with TA of 7g/L which was pasteurised at 1.007 (13g/L sugar) so 2:1 might be worth a try to start.

Apple , SG, Sugar g/L, Acid g/L, pH

Sweets:
Gala, 1.050, 107, 4.5, 3.8
Red Delicious, 1.053, 114, 2.6, 4.3

Sharps:
Granny Smith, 1.048, 102, 9.2, 3.5
Pink Lady, 1.053, 114, 9.3, 3.6
Cox’s Orange Pippin, 1.064, 140, 10.0, 3.6
Ballerina, 1.055, 120, 10.0, 3.6
Crimson Knight Crab, 1.060, 130, 14.0, 3.3 (not quite so good for eating!)

Sorry it is a bit messy to read. As written it was nicely spaced in columns, but when posted the spacing went away so I had to edit by putting in commas and only one space to separate the headings and numbers. Hope this helps.

Cheers!

 

[AzOr]

Another thing to consider is using tannins. You can get them a package of tannin powder at any lhbs. When using sharps, it’s pretty common to use something tannic. That could be oak chips or the easy route is powdered tannins. A little goes a long way.

When I was using mainly store bought aj, adding acid and tannins was my not so secret move to make the cider delicious.

Good luck.

 

[Chalkyt]

Your dilemma started the brain cells ticking over. I had a bit of an overnight think about how to end up with something like a BJCP Medium-Dry cider (up to 1% residual sugar). I wonder if anything less than this might not overcome the acidity

According to BJCP, my acidic Pink Lady mentioned above is Medium at 13g/L or 1.3% sugar. To me, it isn’t all that sweet, being roughly like ½ teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee. So, if I was aiming for it to be a less sweet Medium-Dry cider with 7g/L acid, I would be looking to pasteurise at 7g/L residual sugar (about SG1.004 or less than 1%).

Maybe this is your starting point, and work from there with sugar at 14g/L (or less) offsetting your 14g/L acid Crab Apple cider, then adjust to get the taste that you want.

Let us know what you end up with. You might come up with a new “Rule of Thumb”.

 

[DaveC73]

After doing some research I've decided to use Champagne as my spirit guide. Champ typically falls between 10-14 g/L acid (expressed as malic). My favourite champ style is Brut, as I normally find it the most balanced. Brut, by definition, is somewhere between 6-12 g/L residual sugar, so it's looking like Chalkyt's suggestion of a 1:1 ratio acid:sugar is pretty much on the money.

I'm going to err on the side of caution and start my bench trials at 6 or 7 g/L sugar and work my may up from there. Hopefully won't take too long to find the "sweet" spot!

 

[Chalkyt]

Sounds like a plan!

 

[Chalkyt]

“Just for fun” since the weather wasn’t too good on Sunday, I decided to back track through the last couple of years’ cider to see if my various notes could shed some light on the ratio of sugar to acid for the ciders that I liked. As with everyone, I sometimes come up with something that isn’t quite to my taste, i.e. too sweet too tart etc.

I prefer something with a bit of acid bite and just a touch of sweetness and use a spreadsheet to produce back labels to remind me what sort of cider each one is and so from these I do have a rough record of FG, sugar, acid etc.

Although I haven’t made any really high acid ciders since most of my apples are dessert types (I blend or add malic acid to around 6.5 g/L if needed), the FG and hence residual sugar varies quite a bit, especially if I heat pasturise above 1.000 for sweet carbonated cider). So far I haven’t stuck to any guidelines since the trade-off between carbonation and residual sugar is what I get when using bottle pressure as a proxy for SG change after bottling.

So, in general terms I found that a ratio of sugar g/L to acid g/L of less than 1:1 usually resulted in a dry cider. Above 1:1 to 2:1 was best for me, producing a “goldilocks” just right slightly sweet cider (generally finishing around 1.004 - 1.005 with 7 - 9g/L sugar and 6.5 - 7.0 g/L acid). Anything above 2:1 ended up a bit too sweet for me. Of course everyone’s taste is different.

This wasn’t terribly scientific as I was just using what data I had, nevertheless it has given me some insight into what I need to do to get the cider that I want.

I hope it helps.

For those who like to digest numbers the figures are attached. I liked all the ciders even though there were differences, but as my Grandpa said about beer… “they are all good, but some are better than others”

Cheers!

 

[DaveC73]

Ok, finally got this done. Cider has an acid level around 12-14 g/L malic acid. I ended up doing the trial with 0, 6, 8, 10 and 12 g/L bochasweet (A non-fermentable sweetener made by extracting sugars from kabocha squash. From my research, I think it's pure xylose. Not to be confused with xylitol. Pretty much 1:1 with table sugar with no funny aftertastes.) Here are the finding of someone who prefers a very dry/crisp cider:

0: Way too tart. No way a normal person could drink this.
6: My favourite. This balanced the acidity just enough to take the harshness away without any perceptible sweetness. It also allowed the tannins in the cider to shine through, which was a neat bonus.
8: My least favourite. Cider was kind of flabby and muddled with no particular character at all. Just weird.
10: Second favourite. At this level the cider was well rounded, but not flabby. This is also where the fruit in the cider came out in force. Fruity nose and taste. Not perceptibly sweet either. This was my wife's fave.
12: Not for me. This is where I could taste the sweetness start to come through. As I said, I don't like sweet/sweeter ciders. My wife didn't mind this. This was her second choice as she didn't like the tannins in the 6 g/L trial.

So I guess this corroborates chalkyt's data: less than 1:1 seems dry and over 1:1 brings you into the realm of perceptible sweetness. Where you land in those ranges will depend on personal preference and what style you're going for. I ended up bottling the whole 3 gallons at the 6 g/L level. I'll report back in a couple of months after these have had to carb up and mellow for a bit. Cheers!

 

[Chalkyt]

Thanks DaveC73... good stuff! From my scratching around, I rather suspect that there is a little bit of non-linearity in the sugar-acid relationship, but I really haven't done any comparisons over a range of acid levels. Looks like you have come up with "Dave's Rule of Thumb".
Cheers!