Brand new brewer, could use some insight

[3milerider]

Hey all,

So I decided after lurking around for a week or so and having browsed all over the web for some tips and tricks I decided to give some rudimentary brewing a shot.

Some background, currently I live on a small island in the Caribbean. And by small, I mean VERY small. So access to supplies is limited at best. I became interested in some of the minimalist brewing techniques. Not wanting to invest too much money for a first time project I decided to give cider a whirl as getting a gallon of apple juice wasn't too expensive here, and I already had some bread yeast sitting around.

Now I realize that my ingredient list there isn't too impressive. But again, let me stress, I'm on a small island in the Caribbean. Getting things shipped here is dicey, especially in terms of speed of shipping. So I chose to work with what I had on hand rather than what would be the best quality. Also, no easy access to testing equpiment (e.g. hydrometers), so I'm basing things off pure math and estimations.

The juice I bought was 28g per 8oz per the label, so by rough estimation I would guess that to be a SG of 1.02ish. Seems low from what I read about juices, but I'll run with that for now. I added a cup of sugar which should have raised SG to 1.048 per my calculations. Pitched with about 2tsp of rapid-rise bread yeast (since later generations of the yeast would just be yeast I see no issue here). Gave it a good shake and screwed the cap back on the juice lightly to act as a makeshift airlock. Wrapped the whole thing in a trash bag with a few holes poked in it (to prevent excess mess in the case of cap malfunction and juice explosion). After 3 days my bubbling had slowed to near minimal so I capped it tight and popped it in the fridge, releasing gas a couple of times as it cooled to keep my bottle from exploding.

So now I have a somewhat decent, self-carbed, very dry cider it appears. It tastes somewhat like an apple-flavored champagne with a slight hint of yeasty flavor (my understanding is this should disappear, or at least be reduced if I let the whole setup age for a few weeks). It doesn't taste too alcoholic, but it's not sweet at all, which leads me to believe I must have processed most of the available sugar. I'm unsure if I just burned up all the available nutrients or if I simply had bad yeast and killed it off with the alcohol concentration at this point.

Now, I'd much rather have a slightly sweeter cider, the mouthfeel and taste aren't too bad though so I'm thinking about repeating this experiment in a few weeks. But can anybody give me a decent estimate of an SG to aim for to get a sweetish cider without being cloyingly so? I figure another cup would give me 1.073, but that seems like it might end up really sweet. Or should I just let my yeast burn itself out with my original setup and then try and backsweeten (maybe with a simple syrup after the cider is cooled)?

 

[2141zach]

I have fermented cider in the bottle it comes in before to and left the lid on loose and it worked fine probably better to make a makeshift airlock though out of tubing that runs from the lid into a glass of water. Anyways to answer your question there are two ways that i know of to get it sweet. Let it ferment dry and back sweeten with unfermentable sweetener or stop the yeast with sorbate or (there's another one cant remember name) and add regular sugar the downside to this one is you can carbonate it unless you do it manually, good luck!

 

[irchowi]

Trying to raise the OG of something to end up with a sweeter end product usually doesn't work because the yeast will just eat up any and all sugar you throw at it. But since you're using bread yeast, it might work because they don't have a very high alcohol tolerance. I don't know what it is off the top of my head, and I don't imagine that it would always be constant, as in bread yeast will 100% of the time die when it reaches a certain ABV.

So the simpler way would be to backsweeten. You said you don't have any access to brewing equipment and if you only have 1 gallon you're probably going to drink it fast. What you can do is dump the gallon into a stock pot and raise the temp to kill the yeast while stirring in your desired sugar. The temperature you choose will dictate how long you need to do this for. I think it's 10 minutes for 190 degrees Fahrenheit.

OR if you want to use non fermentable sugars like Splenda/lactose you can do that and not have to stove-top pasteurize or use suphite/sorbate.

 

[3milerider]

Hmm, interesting. I'll try to backsweeten this batch utilizing stovetop pasteurization then.

What about filtration? I obviously don't want to carry my yeast sediment over into the finished product. But again, having limited supply availability, what can I do?

I'm thinking run the batch through a strainer lined with a coffee filter just as simple filtration.

Also, I think by either of these methods I'm going to end up losing my lovely carbonation. I can't think of any method to re-carb it with the supplies I have on hand, short of adding more sugar and yeast and re-starting fermentation for a bit. Any other thoughts?

 

[2141zach]

best thing to do to carbonate while sweetening is add the correct amount of real sugar for carbonation ( your priming sugar) and add your non fermentable sugar then bottle and carb. Now you have a carbonated sweet cider I think you should have these supplies am i wrong?

 

[3milerider]

Bottles I can get aplenty, however I have nothing with which to cap them. Right now I have a carbonated dry cider. What I've done so far (and worked really well) is add a few teaspoons of simple syrup at the bottom of the glass before pouring the cider. Gets it to what I could consider the perfect sweetness (tastes almost like fizzy apple juice then).

My supplies are VERY limited, and I'm currently still keeping it in the gallon jug I fermented in because I have nothing else to pour it into. I plan on washing this bottle very well and using it to keep my finished product after I brew my next batch.