Bottling Sugar

[cycleguy04]

For all of the beers I have done, I put in in the prescribed amount of DME before bottling. I never pasteurize and I have never had an exploding bottle.

In all the cider recipes I have read, there seems to be a collective concern about exploding bottles.

Is it really any different from beer? If I am careful enough about how much bottling sugar I put in is there still a need to pasteurize or cold crash?

 

[Yooper]

For all of the beers I have done, I put in in the prescribed amount of DME before bottling. I never pasteurize and I have never had an exploding bottle.

In all the cider recipes I have read, there seems to be a collective concern about exploding bottles.

Is it really any different from beer? If I am careful enough about how much bottling sugar I put in is there still a need to pasteurize or cold crash?

No, not really.

What does mean exploding bottles is when people like to sweeten their cider and carbonate it as well. Most people who drink commercial hard cider are accustomed to a very sweet and bubbly product, and so to emulate that would require bottle pasteurization.

I like dry ciders, so never have pasteurized, and never will.

 

[cycleguy04]

If I wanted to use concentrated apple juice as my bottling sugar, what would be a safe amount for 5 gallons without pasteurizing?

 

[Yooper]

If I wanted to use concentrated apple juice as my bottling sugar, what would be a safe amount for 5 gallons without pasteurizing?

I hate math! You'd have to use the equivalent amount of sugar to what is in 5 ounces priming sugar. That's something I don't have time to calculate. Since the sugar would ferment out, it wouldn't leave any taste or anything behind and it would be a very small amount- but without calculating it out I don't know.

 

[cycleguy04]

I hate math! You'd have to use the equivalent amount of sugar to what is in 5 ounces priming sugar. That's something I don't have time to calculate. Since the sugar would ferment out, it wouldn't leave any taste or anything behind and it would be a very small amount- but without calculating it out I don't know.

So what you're saying is I might as well use bottling sugar because the amount of concentrated apple juice I would use would be so miniscule that the cider wouldn't really benefit from its flavor?

 

[natehoekstra]

Yes, just go with priming sugar. You're talking small quantities of sugar, so a taste difference between sugar (easy, known quantity for volume of co2) and concentrate (hard, the maths, sugar concentrations, etc) will be very small. Also remember that all of that sugar will ferment out, so it's not like you're adding it for sweetness, just carbonation.

 

[MindenMan]

Table sugar and fructose are both completely fermentable. The math is actually very easy, one ounce is 30 grams, so five ounces of sugar in a 5 gallon batch for carbonation is 150 grams or so. The frozen concentrate container tell you how many grams of carbohydrate per ounce of liquid concentrate. Count the carb grams as sugar grams, so 150 grams divided by X ounces of concentrate, equals the number of ounces of concentrate needed. Easy math actually.