Best way to back sweeten cider

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

CA_Mouse

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Jan 18, 2013
Messages
2,000
Reaction score
364
Location
Anaheim
Okay... Long story short version.

I made an Apple Pie Cider (first cider since 1984). Apple juice, brown sugar and cinnamon sticks (yes, real cinnamon) and Cote de Blanc yeast. OG was 1.070 and FG is 0.989 for 10.7%. It is nice and crisp and very dry (white white dry). I want to back sweeten it with a bit more of the same juice and more brown sugar. I have never back sweetened before, so what is my best option? I was thinking of heating 2 cups of unfermented juice and 1# of brown sugar to 185F, chilling and adding it to the 4.5 gallons currently cold crashing.

Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? I want to make this a little more than a sipping cider and plan on bottling half and carbonating half.
 
Not sure what you mean by bottling half and crbonating half... do you mean "kegging"?

Regardless, if you add fermentable sugar, the yeast will nibble it up, raise your final ABV, possibly create bottle bombs, and you will be left with as dry a cider you had before.

The... yeast....must....DIE!

Read the thread about stovetop pasteurizing (sticky at the top of the forum).

Another option is K sorbate & metabisulfite. I did that with a batch I kegged, but I also cold crashed it prior to that, and it stays in a cold keggerator to prevent any residual yeast from working....

A final option is to back-sweeten with a non-fermentable sugar - YOU can taste it but the yeast can't use it... I can't comment on that, haven't tried it, but there are a few threads here about that as well.

Good luck!
 
Another option is to filter. I'm going to start a batch this weekend and i plan on filtering to get rid of most the yeast (1 micron). i will still use campden tablets before hand since the filter gets only 90% of the yeast. I think a .5 micron will get rid of 100% of the yeast.
 
Not sure what you mean by bottling half and crbonating half... do you mean "kegging"?

Regardless, if you add fermentable sugar, the yeast will nibble it up, raise your final ABV, possibly create bottle bombs, and you will be left with as dry a cider you had before.

The... yeast....must....DIE!

Read the thread about stovetop pasteurizing (sticky at the top of the forum).

Another option is K sorbate & metabisulfite. I did that with a batch I kegged, but I also cold crashed it prior to that, and it stays in a cold keggerator to prevent any residual yeast from working....

A final option is to back-sweeten with a non-fermentable sugar - YOU can taste it but the yeast can't use it... I can't comment on that, haven't tried it, but there are a few threads here about that as well.

Good luck!

I used metabisulfite and am in the middle of cold crashing it now. I was going to pasteurize it after bottling.

But as I've never back sweetened anything, I wasn't sure of the best way to go about it. I do know that I don't want to use the non-fermentable sugars, I've had ciders that use xylitol and can't stand the artificial sweetness they give.

The half that will be sparking, will be carbonated in a keg and then bottled off from there.
 
Another option is to filter. I'm going to start a batch this weekend and i plan on filtering to get rid of most the yeast (1 micron). i will still use campden tablets before hand since the filter gets only 90% of the yeast. I think a .5 micron will get rid of 100% of the yeast.

I used metabisulfite and cold crashing, I'll be pasteurizing the still bottles to kill any yeast that gets past the cold crash/metabisulfite.

I'm not worried about that part of the process, just the best way to back sweeten.
 
I see you have the yeast part down. The recipe i'm following calls for concentrated frozen apple juice and a caramel sauce for back sweetening.
 
I see you have the yeast part down. The recipe i'm following calls for concentrated frozen apple juice and a caramel sauce for back sweetening.

I was going to concentrate (basically reduce 2 cups of the same apple juice) with the brown sugar to create a basic caramel sauce then dilute with another 2 cups of the juice and add to the keg. I'll be bottling everything off the keg and then pasteurizing the bottles.
 
I think frozen apple juice concentrate will have a lot more apple flavor than just reducing down 2 cups + 2 more cups of reg apple juice. The recipe im using uses 3 cans of the frozen stuff. Its your cider though so its up to you how you want to do it. Here is the recipe im using

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/caramel-apple-hard-cider-292770/

The original one called for 5 cans but the updated is only 3. i think people were saying it was too sweet with 5 cans, thus the update.
 
I think frozen apple juice concentrate will have a lot more apple flavor than just reducing down 2 cups + 2 more cups of reg apple juice. The recipe im using uses 3 cans of the frozen stuff. Its your cider though so its up to you how you want to do it. Here is the recipe im using

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/caramel-apple-hard-cider-292770/

That was the idea behind my Apple Pie Cider. Since I'm using unpasteurized juice I wanted the flavor to stay the same. I've tasted the concentrated juice locally, but it isn't from the local trees, so it doesn't taste the same. By reducing my juice, I'm basically using the same idea, just have to do a little more work to get there.
 
My idea was to buy a half liter bottle of black currant concentrate - it contains preservatives - to back sweeten my ongoing batch of cider. I think that since the concentrate contains preservatives that the sugars won't ferment, but we shall see after I toss it into the secondary. I don't normally do secondary for cider, but in this case just need to see if this concentrate will continue to ferment or not.

This is 1+4 concentrate, and so I am wondering how much of it to use to backsweeten and flavor so I end up with a total of 10 liters in my secondaries (I've got two 5 liter jugs for this).
 
I agree with not using artificial sweetener. That was all I used for a while and my ciders were medicinal. The big shift happened when I moved to kegging my ciders. A little k meta and a couple cans of concentrate did the trick. I'll never go back.

Pasteurization works, but I was always afraid I was going to blow up a bottle, so I never tried it. I may give that a whirl one day. Good luck with the cider!
 
My idea was to buy a half liter bottle of black currant concentrate - it contains preservatives - to back sweeten my ongoing batch of cider. I think that since the concentrate contains preservatives that the sugars won't ferment, but we shall see after I toss it into the secondary. I don't normally do secondary for cider, but in this case just need to see if this concentrate will continue to ferment or not.

This is 1+4 concentrate, and so I am wondering how much of it to use to backsweeten and flavor so I end up with a total of 10 liters in my secondaries (I've got two 5 liter jugs for this).

I keep hearing to take a measured amount (say 4oz) and using a graduated eye dropper, add until you read the amount of sweetness you want. Then all the math everyone hated as a kid takes over. So given our 4oz sample (just to simplify) we add an oz to get it where we want it, then for every 128oz you would need 32oz to back sweeten. To me that seems a bit excessive. I was planning on adding roughly 64oz to my existing 4.5 gallons to keep it dry and crisp, but give it a nice sweetness.
 
I keep hearing to take a measured amount (say 4oz) and using a graduated eye dropper, add until you read the amount of sweetness you want. Then all the math everyone hated as a kid takes over. So given our 4oz sample (just to simplify) we add an oz to get it where we want it, then for every 128oz you would need 32oz to back sweeten. To me that seems a bit excessive. I was planning on adding roughly 64oz to my existing 4.5 gallons to keep it dry and crisp, but give it a nice sweetness.

Yeah, that's a good idea, thanks. I don't have a graduated eye dropper, nor can I get ahold of one without mail ordering, but I do have a 100ml graduated cylinder so that should do the trick.
 
Yeah, that's a good idea, thanks. I don't have a graduated eye dropper, nor can I get ahold of one without mail ordering, but I do have a 100ml graduated cylinder so that should do the trick.

kids medicine spoons work pretty well too. I think these can 'be gotten at Wallyworld or Target pretty cheaply.
 
Back
Top