Last weekend we bottled about 11 gallons of cider - the first 3 of out of the 4 batches I've made. Batch #1 was made with fresh pressed cider from a local orchard, #2 from organic apple juice and #3 from a 75/25 blend of organic apple and organic pear juice. All were fermented to dryness and I did not backsweeten as we like completely dry cider.
(the carboy with the checkered tape and special edition carlo rossi aging vessel in front of it is a ~10% batch that tastes great 2 months in but I'm going to let it age and see what happens - should I sulfite it too? I haven't yet)
It just hit me today that I didn't add any campden tablets after transferring to the bottling bucket to prevent oxidation:
I added campden to batch #1 a few months ago when I racked it from secondary to another carboy. Batch #2 has never been sulfited (I didn't add any when I racked to secondary) and batch #3 went straight from primary (it was in there for about 11 weeks) to the bottling bucket, also with no campden tablets added.
Obviously, a lot of oxygen was introduced between racking to the bottling bucket and then filling the bottles.
How big of a mistake did I make and what should I expect with the cider? it all tasted fine, although a bit bland (I used champagne yeast which I've recently learned can strip the apple flavors out). Do we need to drink all of these now as opposed to letting them age in the bottle for a while?
Thanks in advance!
(the carboy with the checkered tape and special edition carlo rossi aging vessel in front of it is a ~10% batch that tastes great 2 months in but I'm going to let it age and see what happens - should I sulfite it too? I haven't yet)
It just hit me today that I didn't add any campden tablets after transferring to the bottling bucket to prevent oxidation:
I added campden to batch #1 a few months ago when I racked it from secondary to another carboy. Batch #2 has never been sulfited (I didn't add any when I racked to secondary) and batch #3 went straight from primary (it was in there for about 11 weeks) to the bottling bucket, also with no campden tablets added.
Obviously, a lot of oxygen was introduced between racking to the bottling bucket and then filling the bottles.
How big of a mistake did I make and what should I expect with the cider? it all tasted fine, although a bit bland (I used champagne yeast which I've recently learned can strip the apple flavors out). Do we need to drink all of these now as opposed to letting them age in the bottle for a while?
Thanks in advance!