Botteling in a Nebuchadnezzar bottle

[Kjd]

Hi all, I have recently bought a Nebuchadnezzar bottle, and I like to bottle my sparkling cider in this bottle. I've read serveral possibilities of bottling, and personally I think the following is the best way;

Just fill the bottle up with previous bottled product, a have plenty of cider in 700ml bottles, if I fill the Nebuchadnezzar I have good product, only thing which i don't know, should i add some extra sugarwater with yeast? Or should i leave it as is with the already finished product? I dont want to blow this bottle.

 

[Chalkyt]

I would suggest measuring the SG of your cider (make sure that it is flat). This will tell you how much residual sugar there is for the new or residual yeast to ferment. If your cider was fully fermented the SG should be around 1.000 and have no or little residual sugar. If the cider is reasonably new it should still have live yeast unless it has been pasteurised, however adding a pinch of yeast wouldn't hurt.

You mentioned that your cider is "sparkling" so you probably have 2-3 volumes of CO2. Decanting it into the N will lose some CO2 but a simple taste test after decanting should give you an idea of how much fizz you have left. I find that my ciders lose any robust fizz quite quickly, but retain enough to leave a nice spritzig mouthfeel (maybe 1 volume of CO2) for quite a while. In fact, recently I have only been carbonating to 2 volumes of CO2.

So, if you want to boost the CO2 for the N after decanting, then adding sugar at the rate of 5g/L should generate 1 volume of CO2, so just extrapolate this upwards to get the carbonation you want. (FYI, fermenting two gravity points will generate about 1 volume of CO2. Two gravity points represents about 5g/L of unfermented sugar).

As champagne type bottles are typically rated at 6+ volumes of CO2, you should be able to add 10 -15 g (2 -3 teaspoons) of sugar per Litre if you want champagne type carbonation without getting into "bottle bomb" territory.

Bear in mind that these figures are only approximate but should get you somewhere near the results you are after.