Beginner Hard Cider Notes

[SixPants]

Decided to do some small cider batches for fun. You can see from the photo there's a nice clear batch and one with chunks floating around.

Here are the cloudy batch notes
1/2 Gallon Giant Eagle Cider Pasteurized & Preserved
1 tbsp white sugar
1 gram red star champagne yeast
Start: 10-15
Rack: 11-11
Poor fermentation. Few bubbles. Good taste during rack.
Kept color. Yeast prob died early in preservative

Clear batch notes

1/2 Gallon Stahl's Cider Cold Pasteurized
1 tbsp white sugar
1 gram red star champagne yeast proofed
Start: 10 - 15
Rack: 11-11
Strong fermentation with bubbles 10-15 sec
Color lightened considerably
Champagne taste. Hope aging will improve it.


I have no conclusions, advice, or questions. Just adding to the experiences shared.

 

[scrawbag]

so you reckon the preservative killed off the yeast? is there much alcohol in them? or is it just for flavour

 

[Tw0fish]

^^that. Sorbate is funny stuff - a yeast that's really rolling can shrug it off somewhat. Were I you I'd wait til that second batch is fermented out to where you want it, cold crash it, rack/drink it and pour the trub (bottom gunk) right into that second bottle and see if having several billion more yeast cells will do the trick

 

[SixPants]

I'm such a novice and I did so many things poorly I hesitate to draw any conclusions.

For instance, it doesn't make much sense to burn up all the sugar. So I really need to get the tools to measure the specific gravity.

I like the idea of dumping the trub into the subsequent batch.

It's all for fun though and I definitely appreciate the resources and help in these forums.