Brewers Best Cider House Kit - Sour Taste

[WTFOMGBBQ]

I recently purchased a Brewers Best Cider House kit and after the time indicated on the kit, and following the directions exactly, it's got a really sour taste...

11/3
-Mixed up 2lbs of corn sugar with 1 gallon of boiling water and tossed into the fermenting bucket
-Added the supplied liquid concentrate to the bucket and topped up to 6 gallons
-Stirred like crazy and pitched the yeast and sweetener kit per the instructions with the mixture around 70 degrees
-Fermented in my basement at a temp of about 62 degrees
-OG of 1.044

11/14
-Final gravity of 1.004 held stable for two days in a row
-At this point the cider tastes great...except for being very sour
-I added the Flavory Sachet per the instructions, this doesn't remove the sour taste but it does add a nice apple taste

It smells like cider, and I can't sense any off smells...other than it just being sour.

Is there anything I could have done wrong, or will the sour taste work itself out with some time? I was really hoping to have a drinkable cider at this point, as that is what the instructions indicated...I just don't want to bottle it if it needs to bulk age for some more time.

 

[Maylar]

1.004 is semi-dry, and with the acid in apples could leave you with the perception of tartness. Take a glass and stir in a teaspoon of honey or other sugar and see if it improves the taste for you. It may be that it just needs to be sweeter for your tastes.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

1.004 is semi-dry, and with the acid in apples could leave you with the perception of tartness. Take a glass and stir in a teaspoon of honey or other sugar and see if it improves the taste for you. It may be that it just needs to be sweeter for your tastes.

I'll have to fish a glass out when I get home and try that. I'm used to dry wine and like the Stone-Dry Angry Orchard, so I didn't expect it to be too dry for my taste.

 

[bernardsmith]

But grape wines contain tartaric acid while apples have malic and malic is a stronger acid than tartaric. Remove all the sugars and if the juice had a lot of malic then your cider will have both a low pH and a low TA. Adding some sugar (after stabilizing the cider to prevent the yeast from treating the additional sugar as their source of energy) may serve to counterbalance the acidity. You might also note that all other things being equal, allowing the cider to age 12 months will often result in some of the malic acids being converted to lactic acids and the lactic acid is far less harsh than malic. In fact, cider makers (as opposed to brewers who make cider) often deliberately choose 71B as their yeast as this wine yeast has the ability to convert about 40 percent of the malic acid to lactic but that process takes time

 

[Maylar]

Unfortunately, with a kit we really don't know what's in it. They may have added acid blend or something to make it "sour" by design.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

Unfortunately, with a kit we really don't know what's in it. They may have added acid blend or something to make it "sour" by design.

Would testing the PH aid in figuring that out? I have some test strips, so that would take all of 30 seconds to do.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

But grape wines contain tartaric acid while apples have malic and malic is a stronger acid than tartaric. Remove all the sugars and if the juice had a lot of malic then your cider will have both a low pH and a low TA. Adding some sugar (after stabilizing the cider to prevent the yeast from treating the additional sugar as their source of energy) may serve to counterbalance the acidity. You might also note that all other things being equal, allowing the cider to age 12 months will often result in some of the malic acids being converted to lactic acids and the lactic acid is far less harsh than malic. In fact, cider makers (as opposed to brewers who make cider) often deliberately choose 71B as their yeast as this wine yeast has the ability to convert about 40 percent of the malic acid to lactic but that process takes time

Fair enough. The reason I got a kit is that I have 5 gallons of cider sitting in a carboy due to a sulfur smell that I'm aging out...Nottingham yeast was used on that one. I had hoped that the kit would produce something palatable in a short amount of time.

 

[Maylar]

Looking over the ingredients of the Cider House kit it seems that they add malic acid, which as bernard said can be quite tart. They also use some artificial sweetener that has a tendency to be bitter.

I noticed you also posted on gotmead. Only a few of us cider geeks hang out there, you'll get more responses here.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

Looking over the ingredients of the Cider House kit it seems that they add malic acid, which as bernard said can be quite tart. They also use some artificial sweetener that has a tendency to be bitter.

I noticed you also posted on gotmead. Only a few of us cider geeks hang out there, you'll get more responses here.

Yea, I posted over there to start because Mead is what got me into homebrewing, but there's a lot more cider activity here.

Well, I went ahead and added some honey to a sample I pulled...it's still got a sour after taste, but it's not as pronounced. I'm not sure what it is, but it lingers in my mouth long after I've taken a drink.

I guess I'm not sure where to go from here?

 

[MarkKF]

I'm used to dry wine and like the Stone-Dry Angry Orchard, so I didn't expect it to be too dry for my taste.

Don't kid yourself. I bet any Angry Orchard is far from Stone-Dry.

read this and comments, too

 

[bernardsmith]

Fair enough. The reason I got a kit is that I have 5 gallons of cider sitting in a carboy due to a sulfur smell that I'm aging out...Nottingham yeast was used on that one. I had hoped that the kit would produce something palatable in a short amount of time.

Sulfur smells are caused by yeast under stress. You may want to whip some air into the 5 gallon carboy and if there is still a significant amount of unfermented sugar you may want to add DAP or Fermaid K or O.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

Sulfur smells are caused by yeast under stress. You may want to whip some air into the 5 gallon carboy and if there is still a significant amount of unfermented sugar you may want to add DAP or Fermaid K or O.

Thanks. I'm actually slowly working on that one to see if I can fix it without throwing too many solutions at it. I whipped it up and tossed another gallon of cider in to restart fermentation with some yeast nutrient to see if it would help, and it did. Now it's just a waiting game according to the local cider experts at the brewery. They said it happens with Nottingham sometimes.

 

[bernardsmith]

I am experimenting with different ale yeasts at the moment, but while brewers tend to go for ale yeasts to ferment cider, cider makers tend to use 71B. 71B has an affinity for malic acid (transforms almost half of it to lactic acid - and so smooths out the harshness often found in cider, as lactic acid is not as strong as malic) and 71B is not very susceptible to producing hydrogen sulfide.

 

[Maylar]

I am experimenting with different ale yeasts at the moment, but while brewers tend to go for ale yeasts to ferment cider, cider makers tend to use 71B. 71B has an affinity for malic acid (transforms almost half of it to lactic acid - and so smooths out the harshness often found in cider, as lactic acid is not as strong as malic) and 71B is not very susceptible to producing hydrogen sulfide.

As a side note - I made a batch of cider last year with 71B and it did as advertised - lowered the perceived acid level. Maybe it's just a sample of one, but I miss the malic acid bite and have had to add acid blend to make the cider interesting. Otherwise it's bland. Not sure I'll use it again.

It did make an awesome cyser though. But that was more about the honey and spices I used than about the apples.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

As a side note - I made a batch of cider last year with 71B and it did as advertised - lowered the perceived acid level. Maybe it's just a sample of one, but I miss the malic acid bite and have had to add acid blend to make the cider interesting. Otherwise it's bland. Not sure I'll use it again.

It did make an awesome cyser though. But that was more about the honey and spices I used than about the apples.

This cyser you speak of...do you have a recipe you wouldn't mind sharing? I'm in love with the XR Cyser from St. Ambrose and have been trying to find a suitable substitute.

 

[Maylar]

This cyser you speak of...do you have a recipe you wouldn't mind sharing? I'm in love with the XR Cyser from St. Ambrose and have been trying to find a suitable substitute.

Cyser is as simple as cider. I mix honey with cider such that the SG is split between them. I used Orange Blossom, but any good honey will work. So for a 1.050 OG cider I mix enough honey (about 1.5 lb) to bring the total up to 1.100. Wine yeast, (71B in this case), you MUST use nutrients (honey has none), and spices. For 1 gallon I used 1 cinnamon stick, 1 clove and 1/2 a whole nutmeg.

It's really a variation of mead, so following the mead protocol with stirring, degassing, and staggered nutrient additions gives the best outcome.

EDIT: Be aware however that this comes out at twice the ABV as the commercial one you mentioned.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

Cyser is as simple as cider. I mix honey with cider such that the SG is split between them. I used Orange Blossom, but any good honey will work. So for a 1.050 OG cider I mix enough honey (about 1.5 lb) to bring the total up to 1.100. Wine yeast, (71B in this case), you MUST use nutrients (honey has none), and spices. For 1 gallon I used 1 cinnamon stick, 1 clove and 1/2 a whole nutmeg.

It's really a variation of mead, so following the mead protocol with stirring, degassing, and staggered nutrient additions gives the best outcome.

EDIT: Be aware however that this comes out at twice the ABV as the commercial one you mentioned.

Your edit is exactly what I was thinking...I want something that's in the 6-8% range, so that it's not in wine territory.

 

[Maylar]

I guess you'd have to dilute it down to 1.060 or so, but I can't comment on how much flavor it'd have. I made a 12% cyser last year and topped off the secondary with finished cider (1.000). The dilution brought it down to about 10%. I used honey to sweeten it in the keg, and carbed it up like a cider. Everybody loved it.

 

[WTFOMGBBQ]

Well. I had some friends over tonight to have a couple beers and brew a Holliday Ale, so I made them taste this cider. We've come to the conclusion that it's the artificial sweetener that's causing the taste.