brewing goes fast

[Rtbrewer]

hey everyone

i started brewing my first cyser about a week ago. I used about 3kg of appels for 2.5 liters of juice and 3kg of honey for a total of 10 liter batch. i used some sulfite tablets to kill everything before adding any yeast.

i had a start SG of approx 1.115 and after a week of beeing in the fermentation bucket i allready got down to 1.030 this is what i normaly aim for cause i like the mead to be rather sweet. but this seems awfully fast, i now transfered it to a basket bottle to continu fermenting and cause its verry hazy.

i was just wondering if maybe i could just kill the yeast and be botteling or i should just leave it and go for backsweetening.

also another small quesstion on another batch of normal mead (honey, water and yeast ) i backsweetend it after aprox 3 months cause it stopped fermenting. after a week i botteled it. and after another week it started producing gas in the mead. did it start fermenting again? (no worrys about bottle bombs i use high grade chemical bottles to put everything in )

thanks for all the help

 

[CKuhns]

A week is pretty quick to drop 85 gravity points but certainly not unheard of if good nutrients, yeast and warm temps. You can slow a active ferment by cold crashing it for a couple days. Then rack it and add those chemicals to inhibit any remaining yeast. (I dont use them so no help with that, sorry.) OR If 1.030 or there about I would pasteurize just to be safe. If cloudy will leave some sediment in the bottle after a bit.

As far as the sweetened one. Yep sounds like your left over yeast started another ferment. (Do the same as above.)

 

[Rtbrewer]

little update, i put it in secondary for about a week now and the SG has dropped to 1 and there are no more bubbels in the airlock i racked it now and started coldcrashing it on a temperature about 4°C . how long should i leave it in. most of the yeast already setteled in secondary. i was thinking about 48 to 72 hours cold then pasteurize to start backsweetening. what do you guys think. also this is appelmead but i feel like there is not much of an apple taste left. is it possible to perform a part of the backsweetening with fresh apple juice or should i just stick with honey.

 

[bushpilot]

Consider using frozen concentrated apple juice for back sweetening. Or, add a little acid blend or malic acid, and tannin to boost the perception of apple.

 

[Rtbrewer]

Consider using frozen concentrated apple juice for back sweetening. Or, add a little acid blend or malic acid, and tannin to boost the perception of apple.

at the start i use a juice centrifuge and fresh apples then i filter 3 times trough cheese cloth sterelise with sulfite tablets. i was considering to do the same for the backsweetening.

 

[bushpilot]

I think that will dilute the cyser quite a bit more than you want before you hit the sweet/sharp/tannic profile you want. That is why I believe you would do better with more concentrated additions, as I suggested above.

You are looking for a nice balance of alcohol, sweetness, acid, and tannin. Adding apple juice will add a little sweetness, but will dull the alcohol, and do nothing for acid and tannin. Concentrate, however, would boost sweetness with less change in alcohol, and will add acid and maybe tannin. My guess is that a little more tannin would then be needed afterwards.

By the way, I am "speculating" here, as I have never used either juice or concentrate for sweetening. I do use concentrate in the primary, though, to boost acid and specific gravity, then I add acid, tannin, and sweeten as necessary in the secondary. But I think concentrate for sweetening would work well, and I plan to try it someday.

 

[pdhirsch]

I've used grocery-store apple juice to backsweeten cyser, and I was happy with the result. Much depends on your own taste... if you have the ability to split the cyser into two or three different vessels, you could try different things with each one and see what you like best.

For the record, my notes say that my last batch of backsweetened cyser started at 1.094 and ended at 0.994. I used potassium sorbate to prevent further fermentation and added 8 ounces of apple juice to 1 gallon of must. Notes say that it was very good 6 weeks after bottling.

Also maybe of interest: yeast was Danstar Nottingham ale yeast, which I didn't expect to ferment all the way down to 0.994; but that's what it did.